The Everypixel service embarked on a fascinating exploration: quantifying the surge in images produced by artificial intelligence since 2022. By meticulously analyzing statistics and data, the service’s experts uncovered a staggering revelation. Over this span, a whopping 15 billion AI-generated images have emerged – a numerical parallel to the photographs taken by humans from the advent of the first image in 1826 until 1975, encompassing approximately 150 years of visual history.
AI Image Generation in Action
With the launch of OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 model in April 2022, a staggering daily average of 34 million images has been conjured by users. Notably, Adobe Firefly, the integrated tool within Photoshop, has been the most rapid image generator, birthing an impressive billion images within a mere three months. Among centralized platforms, Midjourney stands out with 15 million users, overshadowing the entire user base of Adobe Creative Cloud, which tallies around 30 million. Notably, a significant 80% or 12.59 billion images sprang forth from models, services, platforms, and applications rooted in the open-source Stable Diffusion neural network, signifying its paramount role in AI’s creative prowess.
A Tentative Milestone in a Dynamic Landscape
The creators of this project adopt a humble stance, recognizing that their findings are not absolute truths, notes NIXsolutions. The rapid evolution of AI technologies, with fresh models and applications emerging ceaselessly, poses challenges in collating accurate statistical data. Hence, the 15 billion image benchmark leans more toward an educated approximation. Comparisons, however, provide context: Shutterstock’s repository boasts 386 million images; Instagram houses 50 billion photos; Google’s image search indexes a staggering 136 billion files; Pinterest hosts up to 240 billion; and Facebook harbors a staggering 1.5 trillion user-uploaded images.