The Visual AI Revolution

Alongside language models, a parallel revolution in visual AI has transformed image generation. Building on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) that revolutionized image recognition in the 2010s, generative models have made extraordinary leaps. The 2021 introduction of DALL-E by OpenAI demonstrated AI's ability to create original images from text descriptions, while Stable Diffusion, released as open-source in 2022, democratized access to this technology. These diffusion models, along with competitors like Midjourney, can now generate photorealistic images, artwork, and designs from simple text prompts, fundamentally changing creative workflows in industries from advertising and design to entertainment and product development.