If you’ve ever messed around with AI tools online, chances are you’ve used Dall-E. OpenAI’s AI art generator is user-friendly and offers a free version, which is why we named it the best tool for beginners in our list of the best AI art generators.

You might’ve heard the name from Dall-E mini, a basic AI image generator made by Boris Dayma that enjoyed a decent amount of viral popularity back in 2021 thanks to its super-simple functionality and free access. But OpenAI’s version is more sophisticated – and now more than ever, thanks to the Dall-E 3 update.

As reported by Reuters, OpenAI confirmed on September 20th that the new-and-improved Dall-E would be available to paying ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise subscribers in October (though an official release date has not been announced yet). An OpenAI spokesperson noted that “DALL-E 3 can translate nuanced requests into extremely detailed and accurate images”, hopefully signally a boost in the tool’s graphical capabilities - something competitors Midjourney and Stable Diffusion arguably do better right now.

Another small step for AI

Although ChatGPT creator OpenAI has become embroiled in lawsuits over the use of human-created material for training its AI models, the Dall-E 3 upgrade actually does feel like a step in the right direction.

In addition to technical improvements to the art generation tool, the new version will also deliver a host of security and safeguarding features, some of which are arguably sorely needed for AI image production services.

Most prominent is a set of mitigations within the software that prevents Dall-E 3 from being used to generate pictures of real-world living public figures or art in the style of a living artist. Combined with new safeguards that will (hopefully) prevent the generation of violent, inappropriate, or otherwise harmful images, I can see Dall-E 3 setting the new benchmark for legality and morality in the generative AI space.

It’s an unpleasant topic, but there’s no denying the potential dangers of art theft, deepfake videos, and ‘revenge porn’ when it comes to AI art tools. OpenAI has also stated that Dall-E creators will be able to opt out of having their work used to train future text-to-image tools, which will hopefully preserve some originality – so I’m going to be cautiously optimistic about this update, despite my previous warning about the dangers of AI.

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