Preface
The focus of this article is not to stage a grand showdown between the user-friendly MinisterAI and the luxurious Midjourney. It’s not a question of who replaces whom or who wins. Instead, this piece introduces another low-cost, accessible drawing tool. More options are always better.
The following showcases MinisterAI’s public exhibition area. It is clear that it can handle a variety of styles such as realism, fantasy, anime, and some odd styles. Of course, the prompts for these display images are also public.
Challenges Faced by Novice Users
The two most discussed AI Image Generator at present, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion WebUI, are both excellent and continuously evolving. The main barrier to Stable Diffusion WebUI is hardware requirements; it requires a powerful graphics card in a personal computer. With the current high prices of graphics cards, one alternative is to set up the entire toolset directly within Google Colab’s cloud. However, this only solves the graphics card issue. Once user enter the cloud, user face new challenges. Google Colab has an entirely different operating process that needs to be learned.
The data and operational stability of free users are not guaranteed. Moreover, resources are limited, which may cause waiting times or disconnections during the drawing process. Eventually, user may have to consider upgrading to a paid subscription (as the drawing program consumes user’s own Google cloud storage space, so user might need to upgrade cloud storage).
On the other hand, the difficulty with Midjourney is its complete reliance on the Discord command interface, which can be cumbersome to use. However, learning is part of using any technology, so this isn’t really a problem. The real issue is that it’s expensive.
The basic plan costs $10 per month, which is reasonable, but the problem is that the basic plan only allows users to draw 200 images, which isn’t enough. If user’re seriously into AI drawing, you know that it’s normal to try and err dozens of times for just one image. So, users have to spend at least $30 to truly unlock the full potential.
In the past, people with more time than money could register multiple accounts to take advantage of the free quota, but that loophole has long been closed due to overuse.
That’s where MinisterAI comes in, a choice that reduces cost without sacrificing drawing capability.
Registering and Using MinisterAI
First, enter the official website: https://mst.xyz/home
To use MinisterAI for the first time,user need to register with phone number.
Advantages of MinisterAI
Unlimited usage: There are no usage costs and no limits on the number of times user can generate images online.
Fast drawing speed: Compared to Midjourney (which produces about 4 images per minute) and Stable Diffusion WebUI (whose speed depends on your graphics card), MinisterAI is extremely fast, completing even large images within a minute. You can freely choose to draw 1-4 images.
Similar drawing model to Stable Diffusion: MinisterAI has many drawing modules to choose from. Once user enter the interface, user will find all the popular models common in Stable Diffusion WebUI, such as Dreamshaper, RPG, Chilloutmix, Anything, etc. The best part is, user don’t need to download these numerous models, saving a lot of time and storage space.
Mainstream features similar to Stable Diffusion: MinisterAI has built-in functionalities like Image to Image and ControlNet, and also allows you to manually adjust weights and drawing seeds.
Simple and fast self-training model: MinisterAI also provides a self-training model feature, allowing user to train their own drawing model. This is similar to Lora in Stable Diffusion WebUI, but simpler. Users are responsible for uploading the images used for training, and all other settings are handled by the system.
Disadvantages of MinisterAI:Compared to Stable Diffusion WebUI, MinisterAI has less freedom. It prohibits sensitive words.
