In this interview series by
Website Planet, executives from leading companies in web development, AI, SaaS, cloud, web hosting, cybersecurity, online marketing, e-commerce, and more reveal the industry trends and pain points that inspired their companies, the unique way they are solving these challenges, and the future trends and technologies that will reshape their industry.
Boris Dayma is the Founder and CEO of Craiyon, an AI image generator that allows users to generate images from text prompts, democratizing access to AI-generated art. Originally known as “DALL-E Mini.”, it became Craiyon in 2022 after going viral. Before founding Craiyon, Boris Dayma worked as a Machine Learning Engineer at Melbor AI and held various engineering roles at Technip and Prysmian Group.
What inspired you to make Craiyon free for everyone, and how do you see this impacting the future of creativity?
I started working on image generation with AI after seeing the original paper from OpenAI introducing DALL·E. I became obsessed with it and from a few Discord members testing my dalle-mini demo, it grew into a viral phenomenon across the world. I could not keep up with the demand and “Too much traffic” on dalle-mini even became a meme.
At the time no AI tool of this quality was accessible. OpenAI had a very small private beta but we could really see the potential and creativity by letting everyone use it. I was amazed by the results.
People were so grateful, using it for various reasons. My research was sponsored by Google TRC which provided the computing resources, but I wanted to find a way to make it sustainable (without depending on sponsorship or burning cash) so it could be used by everyone forever for free. That’s how Craiyon was born. It was quite a crazy idea and I didn’t know if we could make it at the time but I really wanted to try.
What features or settings can help beginners get better results? Are there any lesser-known settings or “hacks” within Craiyon that only advanced users tend to leverage?
We want people coming for the first time to Craiyon to be able to generate exactly what they want on the first try, hiding all the complexity of such a tool. But as they start creating images, we try to suggest new prompt ideas, or show them images that can inspire them, that they can either use as a reference or take inspiration from the prompt.
Our expert users are way better than us and are able to steer the model in very cool directions, creating their own style. We have a few more expert features to allow you to choose your image aspect ratio so the AI can adapt to it, specify things you don’t want in the image, and keep on adding styles you can select from.
In the near future we’ll create tutorials from beginner to expert where people can share their coolest tips.
What’s the most innovative or surprising way someone has used Craiyon?
People have used Craiyon for illustrations in books, games, presentations… for their business logos, for the art cover of their new songs, for large prints to decorate their home… Some others have used it as inspiration before painting it manually on canvas, creating 3d models for games…
One of the use cases I enjoy the most is people using it just to have fun. They create whatever they have in their mind and share it with their friends for a good laugh. It makes me very happy to know that we make people’s day better, even if just for a few seconds.
What are the most common mistakes you see new users making when creating images with Craiyon, and how can they avoid them?
People may want a picture of a cat, and it will come back a drawing, a photo, a watercolor painting… When they have something very specific in mind, they have to specify it. They can be disappointed to have a photo when they want an illustration and vice versa.
At a minimum, they should try to specify what style they want for their image when they already know. If they don’t like the style they can describe it as a negative word.
But I also think we are the ones responsible for making it easy for them to get exactly what they want easily vs them having to learn how to use our tool.
What’s your advice for someone who feels stuck because they aren’t getting the results they expect? Any tips for troubleshooting their prompts?
The best would be to use our search to find images that other people have created. Then you can take inspiration from their prompts. You can even search by image so if you have an example of what you want you can search for similar ones.
Are there specific types of users or industries that benefit most from the Pro version, and how? Can you share examples and metrics of how the Pro features directly impact the creative workflow?
The Pro version is much faster, which is convenient for iterating quickly through ideas. You start from a prompt and little by little edit it until you get to what you desire. For business creatives that depend on creating images that is a much more enjoyable experience.
They also have access to more formats so if you need to create large landscapes or portraits you will have better results. If the model knows what’s the final format of the image it can take advantage of it to create a better image composition.
AI image generation has come a long way in a short time. What do you think the next big leap in AI art technology will be?
I want to improve the iterative workflow. You need to create a character and say that’s the one you now want, easily edit it and then create any image with it, where all the details of this character are respected. Potentially you want to also give those images a specific style easily. It needs to be instantaneous and convenient. And it needs to be feasible at a very low cost, maybe even free.
And what about Craiyon’s future? Can you reveal any exciting features or upgrades you’re working on? How will they benefit your users?
We’ve been building the fundamental blocks that will let you accelerate our development and release of new features.
We’re always working on improving image quality and prompt understanding. We also want to create more models for specific applications. And we will now start adding more editing features that can let you create your final asset very simply while staying within Craiyon.
How can our readers connect with you?
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/borisdayma/
X: https://x.com/borisdayma
