Recomparing the main AI image creation tools 2 years on

This page has 0 threads | Add post

Blogs

Many people around the world enjoy and benefit from our blogs. If you're one of them - and can afford to - please make a small donation to help keep this and future blogs, exercises, skills assessment tests, tips, tutorials and videos freely available to everyone!

Some other pages relevant to these blogs include:

Classes in AI (Artificial Intelligence)

You can also book hourly online consultancy for your time zone with one of our 7 expert trainers!

Recomparing the main AI image creation tools 2 years on Part one of a five-part series of blogs
In this blog I re-run AI image creation comparison tests I performed way back in July 2024 to see how the results - and the tools which produce them - have changed. Recomparing the main AI image creation tools 2 years on (this blog) First test - photo-realism Second test - following instructions Third test - being creative My overall verdict on the results of the tests

Recomparing the main AI image creation tools 2 years on

Part one of a five-part series of blogs

In this blog I re-run AI image creation comparison tests I performed way back in July 2024 to see how the results - and the tools which produce them - have changed.

Recomparing the main AI image creation tools 2 years on (this blog)
First test - photo-realism
Second test - following instructions
Third test - being creative
My overall verdict on the results of the tests

Posted by Andy Brown on 18 May 2026

In this blog

The AI tools I compared previously
The AI Tools this test will compare

Nearly two years ago I compared the then main AI image generation tools, to see which one came out on top (my recommendation then was to use either ChatGPT or Copilot, which at the time both used the Dall-E model, and avoid Stable Diffusion like the plague). I thought it was now time to revisit the tests, to see what's changed.

The AI tools I compared previously

Way back in 2024 I decided to compare these tools:

Tool	Notes
Dall-E	The image generation model used by ChatGPT and Copilot.
Midjourney	A dedicated image generation tool with a reputation for quality of images, which personally I found hard to use.
Stable Diffusion	Another dedicated image generation tools which came last on every test that I ran.
Adboe Firefly	I included this purely because I felt that any image product created by Adobe deserved consideration.

I didn't include Claude and Gemini because at the time they didn't include the facility to generate images - just text.

The AI Tools this test will compare

I'm writing this blog for business users of AI tools, not for people who specalise in working with images, so I've decided this time round to include the 4 AI tools that I would consider most mainstream. That is:

Tool	Notes
ChatGPT Plus	The world-changing original AI tool from OpenAI.
Claude Pro	Anthropic's OpenAI spin-off, which now includes image generation.
Copilot Chat	The version of Copilot which comes as part of a 365 business subscription.
Gemini Pro	The paid version of Google's AI tool, which - like Claude - now includes image generation.

In each case I'm using the paid version of the tool to make the comparision as fair as I can. Copilot's licensing is (typically for Microsoft) complicated; I've decided not to test Copilot 365 Business because few everyday business users will want to pay the upfront annual licence cost.

And with all that preamble out of the way, let's go on to our first test!

Parts of this blog
Recomparing the main AI image creation tools 2 years on (this blog) First test - photo-realism Second test - following instructions Third test - being creative My overall verdict on the results of the tests

Some other pages relevant to these blogs include:

Artificial Intelligence training courses

You can also book hourly online consultancy for your time zone with one of our 7 expert trainers!

This blog has 0 threads

Add a new post

ALL BLOGS

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BLOGS

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) BLOGS

The AI tools I compared previously

The AI Tools this test will compare

Head office

London

Manchester