Spotlight: civitAI

DISCLAIMER:

civitAI is meant for adults 18 and over as there is mature content which is inappropriate for minors. Adults can utilize various filters to hide adult content if they choose.

There is a PG version of civitAI called civitai.green if you want to avoid the less savory side of this AI space. With that said, let's continue on!

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What is civit.ai and why should you care?

Civit is one of the biggest online spaces for open source generative AI (image and video).

It's a massive treasure trove of checkpoints (image models), LoRAs, tutorials, articles and other resources. Not only that, but they do a good job at keeping their userbase engaged with Daily Challenges to help you earn some extra daily Buzz (the name civit gave to their site credits) and maybe even some clout if you win!

They also have frequent contests, some of which are collaborations with other AI services.

If that didn't get you interested, then keep reading for even more goodies.

If you've been wanting to train your own LoRA, you can do so on civitAI for a fair price of 500 Buzz (equal to 50 cents), and the on-site trainer also has a built-in tagger to make your life easier. It's not perfect, but it's great if you want to make something with minimal stress and you already have a robust dataset of images.

Here's their official tutorial on how to use the on-site trainer if you're interested in learning more about the process: CivitAI LoRA Trainer

CivitAI offers a handful of ways to earn Blue Buzz (the free version of the onsite currency, with Yellow Buzz being the paid equivalent). There are relatively simple daily missions you can tackle in a few minutes like posting something, following 3 people and liking a number of images - all of which will net you some Blue Buzz.

If you're diligent every day with these missions and also participate in the daily challenges, you'll rack up enough Blue Buzz to do just about anything you want on the site, including generating images and videos!

If your PC isn't beastly enough to run local gen, look no further than civitAI!

Choose from one of hundreds of different checkpoints from the SD1.5, SDXL, Pony, Illustrious, Flux, etc, families and pair it with one (or several!) of a ba~zillion different LoRAs made for that particular family and have fun bringing your wildest dreams to life in art form.

Got a fun image you'd love to see animated? Civit's got you covered there, too, with awesome services like KLING, Vidu, Wan, Hunyuan and a few others. One video costs roughly as much as a basic LoRA training run in my experience, but it's a fun time, especially if you're very active on Civit and have a lot of extra Buzz to spend.

So that's the lowdown on civitAI. Why not give it a try today?

DISCLAIMER:

civitAI is meant for adults 18 and over as there is mature content which is inappropriate for minors. Adults can utilize various filters to hide adult content.

There is a PG version of civitAI called civitai.green if you want to avoid the less savory side of the AI world.