Black Forest Labs’ Kontext AI models can edit pics as well as generate them

Black Forest Labs, the AI startup whose fashions as soon as powered the picture technology options of X’s Grok chatbot, on Thursday launched a brand new suite of image-generating fashions — a few of which might each create and edit pics.

Probably the most able to the fashions within the new household, referred to as Flux.1 Kontext, may be prompted with textual content and, optionally, a reference picture to create new photos, writes Black Forest Labs in a weblog submit.

“The Flux.1 Kontext fashions ship state-of-the-art picture technology outcomes with sturdy immediate following, photorealistic rendering, and aggressive typography — all at inference speeds as much as 8x quicker than present main fashions,” the corporate writes in its submit.

Flux.1 Kontext comes because the race to construct aggressive picture mills heats up. Google debuted its newest image-generating mannequin, Imagen 4, earlier this month on the firm’s I/O developer convention. Earlier this 12 months, OpenAI introduced a vastly improved image-generating mannequin to ChatGPT — a mannequin that rapidly went viral for its potential to create artwork within the model of Studio Ghibli films.

There are two fashions within the Flux.1 Kontext household: Flux.1 Kontex [pro] and Flux.1 Kontex [max]. The previous permits customers to generate a picture and refine it by means of a number of “turns,” all whereas preserving the characters and types within the photos. Flux.1 Kontex [max] focuses on pace, consistency, and adherence to prompts.

Not like a few of Black Forest Labs’ earlier fashions, Flux.1 Kontex [pro] and Flux.1 Kontex [max] can’t be downloaded for offline use. Nonetheless, Black Forest Labs is making an “open” Kontext mannequin, Flux.1 Kontext [dev], out there in personal beta for analysis and security testing.

Black Forest Labs can be launching a mannequin playground that permits customers to strive its fashions with out having to enroll in a third-party service. New customers get 200 credit, sufficient to generate round 12 photos with Flux.1 Kontex [pro].

Black Forest Labs, based mostly in Germany, was mentioned to be in talks to lift $100 million at a $1 billion valuation towards the top of final 12 months. Most of the founders hail from Stability AI, the creator of the infamous Steady Diffusion image-generating mannequin. Backers embrace Andreessen Horowitz, Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe, and Y Combinator’s Garry Tan.

Within the months because it emerged from stealth, Black Forest Labs has launched numerous new image-generating fashions and enterprise-focused providers, together with an API.