The problem with AI images, in my opinion, is not the generated image (that can be better or worse) but the prompt and instructions given to the AI and their "defaults".

So many blog posts and social media updates have that horrible (again, to me) feel and look of overly plastic vibe, like a cartoon that has been burn... just like "needs more JPEG" but "needs more AI-vibe".

Sadly with SAI going effectively bankrupt things changed, their rushed 3.0 model was broken beyond repair and the later 3.5 just unfinished or something (the api version is remarkably better), gens full of errors and artifacts even though the good ones looked great. It turned out hard to finetune as well.

In the mean time flux got released, but that model can be fried (as in one concept trained in) but not finetuned (this krea flux is not based on the open weights flux). Add to that that as models got bigger training/finetuning now costs an arm and a leg, so here we are, a year after flux got released a good finetune is celebrated as the next new thing :)