Developer: Wombo Studios
Price: Free
Size: 27 MB
Version: 1.2.5
Platform: iPhone & iPad
It’s long been hypothesized that robots will take many of our jobs, perfectly suited as they are to repetitive and highly technical labor. But did anyone foresee artificial intelligence making waves in the art world?
Canadian startup WOMBO’s app Dream is doing just that. The automatic art-making program, something of a viral hit at the end of 2021, continues to evolve into one of the finest virtual painters we’ve seen.
Note that this is not a glorified filter app that takes existing photos and turns them into faux paintings or cartoonish caricatures.
Instead, Dream takes a word or phrase as a prompt and uses an algorithm (trained by exposure to a huge range of diverse imagery) to generate a completely unique, original artwork.
You can choose from a range of familiar art styles, from ornate baroque paintings to futuristic synthwave landscapes and everything in between. You can even ape the great Salvador Dali if you so choose. Though each style tends to produce relatively samey results, the amount of permutations possible when combined with your custom prompts is mind-boggling.
And for the most part, the app does a surprisingly good job rendering your requests. The results are weird, abstract, and often genuinely beautiful. It’s also incredibly fun to mess around with.
Your creations can be saved to your camera roll or shared to all the usual places. Creating a free account allows you to save favorite compositions to your gallery for posterity, and you have the option to re-generate any artwork using the same prompt if the result isn’t quite right. There’s just enough randomness in the back end to ensure you’ll never get the same output twice, even with the same input.
Amazingly for this kind of service, it’s fast, functional, and fully free. You love to see experiments like this reach a wide audience and not lose their identity. There are no ads or subscriptions in sight – WOMBO makes its money by offering a print-on-demand service for your creations.
All in all, it’s hard not to recommend this app – it’s fun, unique, shareable, and an amazing insight into AI-powered artistry.