So there I was, scrubbing through Play Store and found this app. It’s an AI image generator that specializes on anime art. Then I saw in the top that there is no indicator of “Contains ads” or “In-app purchases”. None of them. Initially I was a bit suspicious, but I decided to try it out anyway.

First glance, there are content. Then, the login. Back then, they were still using embedded webpage to perform the login. That increases my suspicions. Fortunately, this system is broken anyway and is replaced using Google’s own API that they provide. A login is required if you want to do more than just viewing images.

They do have a website for all this, but I only found out after a few days later. If you want to try it out yourself, go ahead and click that link.

Rough attempts

The first thing I tried was making a gacha splash art for one of my original characters (OC). And by splash, the AI interprets that as having water splashes, which is weird, since my particular OC is not of Hydro element.

I decided to switch up the prompt and still with no impressive results. This time, I go with Arknights style. How do I achieve that? With LoRA, basically a modifier add-on. It’s a common thing in Civitai community. People can use upload either their own or someone else’s LoRA to the site.

Then I found their Discord, which provides three generations for free, plus five for connecting your PixAI account to Discord for the first time. To this day, I rarely use this feature because the app does better. And the web version is even better. There I actually post my first public generation.

Overall, they get the job done. I have made some images with various techniques of prompting, different models and LoRAs, and even did some inpainting and outpainting. For more advanced prompting and parameter adjustments, that is something I got to learn as I go.

Cost concerns

Seriously, how does this site is able to run all its features without users paying for the service? I know AI processing can be time-consuming and expensive, yet they choose to stay free. At least at the of writing, people are opening up ideas for premium features and monetization. I don’t know how it will turn out, but we’ll see in the future.

They do have credits and 10k credits daily allowance, which puts artificial time gate for users. This is enough for about 5 generations with default settings. Advanced settings may increase the costs, and certain settings can lower it down, like using the Euler sampling method. Other than that, if you don’t use it every day, it becomes a daily login simulator, which only takes 15 seconds with the app.

What’s next?

I heard there’s LoRA training now. I am interested in making my own LoRA. But first, I need to be able to generate consistent style for my OC first. You need at least 10 images of decent resolution (at least 1024px). Also, what is your idea for the name of the OC? Even though I have a name already, I am still curious of your opinions. Beam me up on X/Twitter.

Finally, check out my other generated images on my PixAI profile page. And just because there is an image that I tag with Raiden Shogun doesn’t mean it refers to that particular character from the game that I never played.