June 26 News.GoogleLaunched the latest version of its text-generated image modeling Imagen 4The company has also released Imagen 4 Ultra, a high-end version designed to significantly improve text rendering compared to its predecessor, Imagen 3. Both versions are now live in a paid preview of the Gemini API and are available for limited free testing at Google AI Studio.
Google has positioned Imagen 4 as a general-purpose model that is "suitable for most tasks" and is priced at $0.04 per image (note: current exchange rate is about $0.29). Imagen 4 Ultra, on the other hand, is designed as a higher-end version that can more accurately follow textual cues, and is priced at 50% more than the regular version, at $0.06 per image ($0.43 at current exchange rates). Google claims that Imagen 4 Ultra's output is "strong" compared to other image generators such as Dall-E and Midjourney.
Although Imagen 4 has improved its performance over its predecessor, its performance has not been impressive, especially when compared to market leaders Dall-E 3 and Midjourney 7. In addition, after the initial enthusiasm, public interest in AI art seems to be fading, and its main application seems to be spamming social media.