What is Google Imagen AI? How to access Imagen 2

Google has its own text-to-image AI model called Imagen, with the current version being Imagen 2. Even if you're not a developer or a business, Imagen 2 is worth a try - it's free fees using Google Cloud. Here's what you need to know!

What is Google's Imagen 2?

Imagen 2 is an AI text-to-image model developed by Google and released on December 13, 2023. This model adds to the growing list of AI text-to-image generators, such as DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, for example, can all instantly create great images from text descriptions.

Imagen 2 takes a giant step forward compared to its predecessor (Imagen) and offers a fully functional AI image generator that can produce artistic and realistic outputs like any other. any competitor. It's hosted in Google's Vertex AI toolkit, which you can access with your Google Cloud account.

By comparison, the first version of Imagen, which launched in May 2022, had a limited beta release through an app called AI Test Kitchen. Users can just try creating cityscapes or characters that look like they came out of a Pixar animated movie.

Imagen 2 boasts features such as inpainting and outpainting, allowing you to add content to the created image or expand the image beyond its borders. This is a feature that DALL-E 2 also has, but what sets Imagen apart is the option to use reference images when creating images.

If you are looking for a text-to-image tool that can solve the problem of AI-generated hands then you should explore the capabilities of Imagen 2. The results are still not perfect but that is the aspect that Google paid special attention to when developing the tool.

How to test Imagen 2 yourself

Imagen 2 is aimed at developers and businesses, but if you're an individual, you can still try it out by signing up for a free Google Cloud account. Click the Start Free button in the top right corner of the page, then follow the instructions to set up your payment account.

You'll need an additional credit card to pay, but you don't need to worry about future charges. Google clearly states that you will not be automatically charged after the free trial period ends.

Once you've created your account, click the Console button on the Google Cloud home page, then click the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines) in the top left corner. In the menu, click Vertex AI Vision. Once on this page, click Studio from the left panel or click the Open Studio button on the right.

What is Google Imagen AI? How to access Imagen 2 Picture 1

How did Google train the Imagen AI model?

Behind the scenes, Imagen is trained using a publicly available dataset called LAION-400M, combined with internal datasets. Not all AI companies choose to make this information public; an example is DALL-E 2.

The use of datasets has also become a controversial topic, partly due to the practice of scraping millions of images from the Internet. In particular, artists have criticized AI companies for not getting consent from the owner of an image or artwork before using it to train their AI models.

If you're concerned about your images, you can find out if your images are being used to train AI models and opt out.

It won't be long before big tech companies like Google start testing AI models. Imagen 2 is another text-to-image AI generator that is sure to be fun to use.

Create a free Google Cloud account to try and download Google's AI Test Kitchen app to see more projects in development than anyone else.

Kareem Winters

Update 06 January 2024