AI Tools for the user
This articles focuses on AI tools from the perspective of a person who uses them, creating AI tools is a different subject that deserves its own article.
Definition and Purpose
AI tools simplify complex tasks like image or video generation, enabling users to achieve results with minimal effort. Some tools offer user-friendly interfaces, like forms or clickable options, to generate content based on prompts or uploaded images. You can think of them as handy presets, or a simple specific use appliance that does one thing as opposed to a general use appliance. When using the standard way of creating AI art you have to personally select a model, a combination of LORAs and their respective strengths, the type of sampler, the number of steps, you have to write a full positive and a full negative prompt, not to mention a number of other settings if you want to make the most of your tokens. With an AI tool most of this has been or at least can be already taken care of by someone who (hopefully) knows how to achieve the intended result. This leaves you to focus solely on your creative idea without having to delve into the technical aspects if that's not something you're interested in.
This naturally means that any single AI tool will have a limited scope as it will be made to produce a specific result, but with so many users contributing their own AI tools, it's just a matter of finding the one that fits your needs. Some AI tools provide lots of options to choose from, others only the most essential ones. The former are more flexible, the latter generally have a more predictable result.
But there's more to AI tools than just simplifying the process of AI art. Since the creation of AI tools is only limited by someone's imagination, it is possible to create AI tools with abilities not accessible through the standard forms. With an AI tool it is for example possible to use one type of model for the initial image generation and then use a different type of model for detailing. This can be very handy since different models have different strengths and weaknesses.
Advice for usage
Browse through the AI tools section to get a feeling for what's available in that realm. Evaluate the AI tool before using it by checking other people's posts made with it. This can tell you what the AI tool is good at and what you can expect from it. AI tools vary greatly in terms of complexity and quality, so the costs aren't uniform either, but can vary quite substantially. Realize that a tool with a higher cost can still be worth it, if it more consistently produces high quality output. No matter which AI tool you use to generate something, the result will come up in your standard creation flow even if you leave or close the AI tool's page while it is still working. There is currently a discount active on all AI tools so take advantage of it to save on tokens.
