Flux.1: An Open-Weights AI Image Model We Should Pay Attention To
Flux.1: An Open-Weights AI Image Model We Should Pay Attention To
Flux.1 is a new family of image models that was developed by the original team behind Stable Diffusion. It's fast, it can run on your local machine, and it generates stunning images.
Flux.1 has arrived, setting a new benchmark in the world of open-weight image models. With 12 billion parameters, it surpasses industry giants like Midjourney V6, OpenAI’s Dall-E 3, and Stability AI’s SD3 Ultra in terms of image quality and performance.
The team behind Flux.1 has an interesting history.
They’re the original developers of the technology that powers Stable Diffusion and the inventors of latent diffusion. Following some internal issues at Stability AI, key team members left to form a new startup called Black Forest Labs.
This kind of “tech exodus” often leads to innovation. When talented individuals branch out on their own, they’re free to pursue bold new ideas without the constraints of larger organizations.
What is Flux.1?
Flux.1 is a suite of text-to-image models that define a new state-of-the-art (SOTA) in image detail, prompt adherence, style diversity, and scene complexity for text-to-image synthesis.
It comes in three variants:
Flux.1 Pro: This offers state-of-the-art performance in image generation, delivering top-notch prompt following, visual quality, image detail, and output diversity.
Flux.1 Dev: This is an open-weight, guidance-distilled model designed for non-commercial use. It is distilled from Flux.1 Pro, achieving similar quality and prompt adherence while being more efficient than a typical model of the same size.
Flux.1 Schnell: This is their fastest model and is designed for local development and personal use. It is openly available under an Apache 2.0 license.
All public Flux.1 models use a mix of multimodal and parallel diffusion transformer blocks and have 12 billion parameters. These models are better than earlier diffusion models because they use flow matching, an easy-to-understand method for training generative models that includes diffusion.
Additionally, the models perform better and use hardware more efficiently by using rotary positional embeddings and parallel attention layers.
Better than Midjourney?
According to the researchers, Flux.1 Pro and Flux.1 Dev surpass popular models like Midjourney v6.0, Dall-E3, and Stable Diffusion 3 Ultra in each of the following aspects:
Visual quality
Prompt coherence
Size and aspect variability
Typography
Output Diversity
But does it, really? Let’s try this example:
Prompt: old man with glasses portrait, photo, 50mm, f1.4, natural light, Pathéchrome
Which one do you think looks best?
All Flux.1 model variants support a diverse range of aspect ratios and resolutions between 0.1 and 2.0 megapixels, as shown in the following example.
Example images
Check out some of the mind-blowing example images generated with Flux.1 Pro. Let’s start with images of people with a primary focus on the fine details, like the hair and wrinkles and fingers and limbs.
The quality is very much comparable to Midjourney on the left image. The level of detail in human features like hair, wrinkles, and fingers is remarkable.
Prompt: A robot holding chalk looking at a blackboard that reads the following poem:”ln pixels’ dance, AI’s craft will rise, Transforming visions through machine eyes, From dreams to screens, new worlds unfurled, AI’s brush reshapes our visual world.”
Text rendering is one of the hardest areas in AI image generation. Even the latest version of Midjourney v6.1 still fails on my initial tests. Flux.1 seems to be really good, even with long texts.
Prompt: beautiful anime artwork, a cute anime catgirl that looks depressed holding a piece of paper with a smile drawn on it over her mouth, she is about to cry
This looks incredibly promising. The soft tones and glowing highlights give it a professional, polished look that rivals hand-drawn artwork.
Next level photorealism
Some users who had access to Flux were quick to discover how eerily realistic the images are. Here are some of the most realistic selfie portraits shared on X.
As someone who’s experimented with various AI image generators, I can confidently say these are some of the most lifelike AI-generated portraits I’ve seen.
How to access Flux.1
For those eager to try Flux.1, there are several free options available:
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