AI has produced 15 billion images so far, statistics say

We all know that AI has become a very popular choice when it comes to content creation. Bing Chat, for example, can generate images for you, if you ask it to do so. Other AI tools, such as Runway Gen-2 will generate entire videos for you with a simple script. You still have to edit them, of course.

Just earlier this year, GPT-4 promised that it can create video content just from texts, and in the following months, a lot of other tools were able to do the same thing.

Generative AI models, such as DALL-E 2 and Midjourney are able to easily generate images at your own whim. And images created by these models ended up winning photography competitions, stirring up a debate on just how ethical it is to use AI to generate art.

However, in just 18 months, AI has produced over 15 billion images so far, according to statistical research done by Everypixel Journal. The statistic also states one important fact: AI has already generated as many images as photographers have taken in 150 years.

Here’s what the statistics are saying when it comes to AI image creation

According to the research:

• Text-to-image algorithms have created more than 15 billion images, since 2022. In comparison, it took photographers 150 years, from 1826 to 1975, to reach the 15 billion mark.
• People are creating an average of 34 million images per day, mainly using DALL-E 2.
• Adobe Firefly is the fastest generative AI: it produced 1 billion images in just three months from launch.
• Approximately 80% of the images (i.e. 12.590 billion) were created using open-source generative AI models, services, and platforms.

Even though many of the AI images are coming from open-source models, the paid generative AI tools are also incredibly popular. For example, Midjourney has the largest community of users, with over 15 million.

In comparison, Adobe Creative Cloud, which includes the AI image generator, Adobe Firefly, has a community of 30 million. So it’s safe to say the AI tools might actually have a chance against the manual tools of creation.

If it’s ethical or not to use AI images in your work, then that’s up for debate. But AI surely does democratizes content creation. However, in many cases, human input is still required.

But what do you think about these AI image statistics? Let us know in the comments section below.