AI products often arrive in two ways: suddenly or after months of hype. Flux, developed by Black Forest Labs, came as a surprise.
This AI image generation model is quickly being recognized as the successor to Stable Diffusion, with many comparing it directly to Midjourney. What makes Flux stand out? It’s open-source and can run on a decent laptop. As a result, it’s available—or soon will be—on various platforms like Poe, NightCafe, and FreePik, similar to Stable Diffusion.
What Sets Flux Apart
After testing Flux myself, we noticed it performs better than Midjourney in some areas, particularly in rendering people. However, its skin textures still lag behind Midjourney v6.1.
Flux originates from Black Forest Labs, a German AI startup. This company was founded by key figures behind today’s top AI image technologies. Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, and Dominik Lorenz, former engineers at Stability AI, lead the team. They specialize in diffusion-based AI models, which also power many AI video tools.
Three Versions of Flux Available
There are currently three versions of Flux.01, all text-to-image models:
- Pro: A commercial version used by companies like FreePik to offer AI-generated images to subscribers.
- Dev: A mid-weight model.
- Schnell: A fast model.
In our tests on a laptop with an RTX 4090, both Dev and Schnell outperformed Midjourney, DALL-E, and Ideogram in prompt adherence, image quality, and text rendering.
Black Forest Labs is also working on a text-to-video model. They promise it will deliver high-quality results and be available open-source, branding it as “State-of-the-Art Text to Video for All.”
How to Access Flux Today
If you have a powerful laptop, you can download and run Flux.01 locally. The Pinokio launcher makes this easy, though the file size is large.
If your hardware isn’t up to the task, several websites offer access to Flux.01, including the Pro model. NightCafe, one of the top AI image platforms, has already integrated the model. You can compare Flux-generated images with those from other tools like Ideogram and Stable Diffusion 3.
You can also use Flux through Poe, an AI model platform. It allows you to create images in a chatbot-style format, similar to tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E.
For developers, Flux is available on platforms like Based Labs, Hugging Face, and Fal.ai. FreePik, one of the largest AI image platforms, is also working to integrate Flux.
