You Can Now Create AI-generated Images for Free in Google Bard

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Those using the free version of Google Bard, Google's AI chatbot competitor to ChatGPT, will now be able to make use of one more ChatGPT-like feature: AI image generation.

Google added the option to create images in Google Bard just last week, making it extremely simple to jump in and tell the chatbot exactly what you want to see. The system runs off Gemini Pro and Google's Imagen 2 model to create the images, which means you can expect a decent balance between quality and speed. Google says Bard should deliver "photorealistic outputs" whenever you use it, though in my experience, the quality definitely varies.

How to create images in Google Bard

Creating images in Google Bard is as telling it to make you an image. All you need to do is head over to the Bard website and type "create an image" or "generate an image," then follow that up with the image you'd like to see.

The results of these prompts can vary, just like with any AI generation system, and it will take a little configuring sometimes to find the perfect prompt for what you want the chatbot to create. But with a little patience, you can usually get a decent result. Google's Imagen 2 system is pretty impressive, even against the other image generation models we've seen, like Midjourney. What makes image generation in Google Bard particularly nice is that it typically spits out a few different style options for each prompt, which can cut down on the back and forth.

It's worth noting that none of the images you generate via Google Bard will qualify as "human-created," not just because of their quality, but because of Google's inclusion of SynthID, which embeds a digital watermark into the pixels to help showcase if an image is AI-generated.