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CNET
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNET
How To Fix the Most Common AI Image Errors and Hallucinations
One of the best parts of my job is laughing at the truly terrible, deeply flawed, occasionally frightening AI images that pop out while I review different AI image generators. I spend a lot of time playing around with AI in ChatGPT, Midjourney and Adobe, and I've learned that no AI generator is perfect. But there are some common patterns, things that many AIs struggle with. Every image generator is unique, but I've spent enough time with them to recognize some patterns. There are certain things AIs are prone to mess up -- fingers on hands, overlapping elements, extremely fine details, etcetera. Some AI image programs give you tools to edit these mistakes, which is great. But when you can't, these are my tried-and-true tips for tweaking your prompts and settings to fix your images. These are the biggest problems I found and how to fix them. For more, check out the best AI image generators and our guide to effective AI image prompt writing. Human faces and expressions Katelyn Chedraoui via Canva Magic Media AI/CNET Accurate facial expressions continually challenge AI generators. Quirky eyes, teeth and eyebrows are some of the strongest indicators that an image is AI-generated. In this case, the result was extremely funny to me, if also completely unusable. The girls are sporting some Halloween-like vampire teeth, and the dude in the back is having more than a bad hair day. Stephen Shankland via Dall-E 3/CNET Even with cartoon or non-realistic characters, generators struggle to moderate emotion and expressions. This image -- created by our best pick, Dall-E 3 -- over-amplified the prompt, and the end result was too dramatic. I'm a self-identified neat freak, but I can't imagine anyone getting this upset over what looks like hundreds of dollars of cleaning supplies. Even the best programs can fail and produce wonky results. How to fix it: I recommend asking the service to cut down on the number of people it's trying to render -- cut down on the number of chances for error -- and using post-generation editing tools to select specific parts of the image that need regenerated or fixed. Picking a more mild adjective ("angry" rather than "enraged") might help guide the service down the right path. Iconic characters, trademarks and recognizable logos Katelyn Chedraoui via Canva Magic Media AI/CNET For many reasons, AI image generators can rarely produce accurate logos, known trademarks or otherwise recognizable characters. This is usually because there are significant legal concerns about a company allowing its brand materials or intellectual property to be used for AI services. It also could be because the logo or brand you want to include isn't in the generator's training data, so the generator won't understand your request. Two recent exceptions to this are new image generation features on the Google Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 XL, thanks to Gemini AI, which our mobile experts used to create images featuring accurate-looking Mickey Mouse and Pikachu renditions. The other exception is some paying X (formerly Twitter) users reporting that they can use the social media site's Grok chatbot to make realistic-looking Mickeys and human political figures. These images still aren't perfect renderings, but they're pretty close. How to fix it: You can't, but on the plus side, you're a lot more likely to avoid lawsuits for copyright infringement. If you run into this issue, I recommend rethinking your design concept to see if you can get the same point across without using a specific company name or logo. Do you really need the TikTok logo, or do you just need a phone with a vertical video playing, for example. Overlapping, complex elements Katelyn Chedraoui via Leonardo AI/CNET Occasionally, you'll stump a generator if you have too many overlapping or complex elements within an image. The best AI image programs aren't going to run into this issue very often, but even the best programs fail at some point. With this Leonardo image, the library of my dreams is ruined by the rolling ladder that disappears halfway up. Katelyn Chedraoui via Canva Magic Media AI/CNET Similarly, this photorealistic image of a kitchen looks alright from a cursory look, but a second glance or quick zoom-in shows nonsensical characters printed on the cookbook, and the book itself seems to have two spines and three sections. Images like this show how frustrating it can be to create AI images -- even when you think you've got a winner, small flaws make them unusable. How to fix it: Try simplifying your prompt or using post-generation editing tools to single out the problem and fix it. Sometimes changing the aesthetic can help as well; these issues usually pop up when you're trying to make photorealistic or stock images. If your service offers a specific area editing tool, try using that to select the questionable area and ask the generator to remove what's in it. Over-editing and hallucinations Katelyn Chedraoui via Midjourney AI/CNET The sign of a great AI image generator is its ability to produce an image with few errors or hallucinations while giving you the right tools to fix those issues when they inevitably pop up, but not every service does. In this example from Midjourney, I went through several rounds of edits on this image of a soccer team celebrating a victory, and I have no idea what happened to get to this final result -- or any clue what's going on with the blob that's presumably a player in the right-hand side of the picture. Frankly, I don't think Midjourney knew either. How to fix it: With editing AI images, sometimes less is more. Don't be afraid to scrap your current batch of images and start over. You can often preemptively fix big issues by refining your prompt so you only have to worry about fixing minor issues later. AI generators still need human work Katelyn Chedraoui via Leonardo AI/CNET I have no doubt that the companies behind these AI generators are working to eliminate these issues and level up their models. For now, imperfect images show us once again that while this tech is improving, it's not flawless. My hope is that because so many of these services face similar challenges, they will all be chasing solutions for these issues. As a final note, I'll remind you that it's a best practice to credit or acknowledge that an image is AI-generated when you share it. As AI images get better and more realistic-looking, it's more important than ever to distinguish AI-generated art from other kinds of media. For more, check out our advice for writing the best AI image prompt and our best picks for AI image generators.
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Yahoo
Best AI Image Generators of 2025
Generative AI has brought us a lot of things, from chatbots like ChatGPT to text-to-image and text-to-video generators. All the major tech players have invested in developing AI image generators, along with a slew of start-ups and smaller companies. For regular users like you and me, that means there are a lot of different programs available. But they aren't all trained and built the same, which can make it a little overwhelming when you're trying to pick the right program to experiment with. That's why CNET reviewers have spent months reviewing every program on this list, generating hundreds of images and creating everything from cartoon safaris to dramatic sci-fi scenes and photorealistic stock imagery. At some point during our testing, every service on this list produced a wonky or unusable image -- no AI image generator is perfect. The test of a truly superior AI image generator is how well-equipped it is to handle those quirks and fix flaws. Editing tools and customization options are a big part of that, which is why we test those extensively. Privacy policies, including how generators potentially train on your content, are also important considerations when selecting the best services. Here are our top picks and everything you need to know about AI image generation. Read More: Create Better AI Images With These Expert Prompt Writing Tips Dall-E 3 by OpenAI is our best AI image generator pick. It can handle long, complex queries, giving you many editing and customization options. Its unique conversational flow also makes it easy to bring your artistic visions to life. If you don't want to sign up for the $20 per month ChatGPT Plus subscription, Leonardo AI offers great AI imagery in its free plan. Beginners will find Canva's user-friendly design easy and accessible to use, and professional creatives looking to experiment with AI art ought to try Adobe Firefly and its family of AI tools. Leonardo is great for AI creatives on a budget. It has a comprehensive free plan that gives you ample generation credits at a fast speed. It doesn't have any free post-generation editing tools (they're paywalled), but it does have a prompt improvement tool and other customization elements that can guide you toward building the best prompts. Leonardo makes it easy to explore what's possible with AI and create vivid, detailed AI images. Its free plan easily knocks its competitors out of the water, even the user-friendly Canva. See at Leonardo AI Adobe Firefly's family of generative AI image tools is built directly into Adobe Creative Cloud, including Photoshop, which makes it a great option for professional creatives looking to experiment. Firefly offers a lot of stylistic and artistic options, and its refinement tools feel similar to editing software that creatives will be familiar with. Firefly is trained on Adobe's own Stock catalog, which includes high-quality licensed and public domain content. Firefly does not train on your content. If you're already paying for an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, Firefly can be an easy way to mock up ideas or spark inspiration. See at Adobe Canva is an extremely user-friendly graphic design service, and its AI image generator Magic Media is a great option for amateur AI creators. Magic Media is a minimalist service, which isn't great if you need extensive editing tools, but it's great for folks on a budget and time crunch. Canva's privacy policy is notably secure, as Canva does not train its AI on your content, and the images you generate are always private, unlike many competitors. Canva also makes it easy to integrate your AI images into your other projects, on desktop and on the mobile app. It's a no-frills, easy-to-navigate AI image generator perfect for beginners and Canva lovers. See at Canva CNET takes a practical approach to reviewing AI image generators. Our goal is to determine how good it is relative to the competition and which purposes it serves best. To do that, we give the AI prompts based on real-world use cases, such as rendering in a particular style, combining elements into a single image and handling lengthier descriptions. We score the image generators on a 10-point scale that considers factors such as how well images match prompts, creativity of results and response speed. See how we test AI for more. Accuracy is an important factor to consider when evaluating AI image generators. Accuracy in this case refers to how well a service matches your prompt and how clearly elements and details are rendered. For example, a service that closely matches the sci-fi/fantasy spaceship scene described in a prompt would be considered accurate, as would a service that generates a picture of a human with a clear expression. On the flip side, hallucinations, or the way AI makes stuff up, are also important to consider. Hallucinations for AI images tend to be seen in the weird quirks or flaws that you didn't request, like people with three arms or disappearing elements. Creativity is an inherent necessity of an AI image generator, but hallucinations are obvious flubs, not whimsical or non-realistic style elements. All AI image generators run into these problems, but great AI services have them less infrequently and offer editing tools ready to fix them. The number of clarifying prompts required indicates how much work you'll have to put into getting the image you want. If you can't follow up with an edit or additional request, that can be a red flag or annoyance to look out for. Generators that adhere closely to prompts and offer editing tools make it easier to bring your vision to life. Response speed is also important to consider. Most image generators are pretty quick, under two minutes or so. Services that can generate images quicker than that, between 10-30 seconds, bring an edge to their user experience. Midjourney is a solid option for an AI image generator, but it didn't make our top picks because it's currently only available on Discord, is paid-only and inconsistently matches prompts. Midjourney does offer nice upscaling or editing tools for individual images, but you'll have to use them often. It's also noteworthy that all your images will be public and accessible in an online gallery unless you create in stealth mode, which is only available in the more expensive Pro and Mega plans. Google's ImageFX also did not make our top picks due to persistent inaccuracies and its 'overbearing nannying,' which results in rejecting innocuous prompts. All AI generators struggle with photorealistic faces and hands, but ImageFX also struggles with inanimate objects and logos. This wouldn't be a deal-breaker, except its editing and fine-tuning tools aren't up to par to make images usable.
