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This is an archive article published on October 3, 2023

DALL-E 3 is turning amateurs into expert comic artists, and it’s free: Here’s how to create your own manga

On September 30, OpenAI integrated its most powerful AI image creator, DALL-E 3, into Bing Image Creator, and the internet has been buzzing ever since.

DALL-E with Bing ChatOpenAI's AI-image generation tool is helping many creators make comics with ease. (Express Image/Twitter)
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DALL-E 3 is turning amateurs into expert comic artists, and it’s free: Here’s how to create your own manga
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A few days ago, AI powerhouse OpenAI quietly introduced its most advanced AI art tool, the DALL-E 3 upgrade into Microsoft’s Bing. The development seems to have leapfrogged OpenAI ahead of Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. And, many are taking advantage of this ridiculously cool update to Bing which is turning AI enthusiasts into comic geniuses. 

From entrepreneurs to AI experts, many are sharing their breathtakingly accurate graphics. Below is a look at some astounding comics created using Bing Image Creator. 

Chase Lean, who identifies himself as an AI educator, shared his creation of a comic in less than 15 minutes. Lean’s comic shows a boy who accidentally discovers a dinosaur egg. Lean, in his subsequent tweets, said that the tool is free to use and anyone can use prompts to make any comic they desire.

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“A comic strip in which a boy discovers a mysterious egg that hatches into a baby dinosaur,” is the prompt used by Lean. In his tweets, he also said that all the panels may not be in chronological order hence, users may need to rearrange them. He recommended the use of Photoshop to rearrange the panels.

After arranging the panels, users will be required to add text to the speech bubbles. While DALL-E 3 can make text, it may not yield great results if there are too many words involved. “If the words don’t make sense, just replace them with whatever text you want,” advises Lean.

Another user, Ammaar Reshi, a design manager at Brex, shared his creation on X. Reshi said that OpenAI’s latest image generation model makes it easy to create comics. He shared a four-panel fan-made Batman comic in less than five minutes. Reshi shared the prompt he used for the comic in the ALT section of the images on X. 

“Create a black and white comic book panel with a close-up of the Joker’s eyes. Include a dramatic sound effect text saying “HAHAH”, read the prompt used by Reshi to create the stunning comic. 

In response to one of the comments about the accuracy, Reshi said that specifying the style will get the tool to offer more consistency. Interestingly, DALL-E 3 seems to be incapable of remembering what it creates. In this instance, it created two different kinds of Batmobiles. 

One of the users commented on Reshi’s post, saying that OpenAI should give DALL-E 3 some sort of memory, similar to how ChatGPT remembers conversations. “That would be cool, we just need something similar to how Midjourney exposes seeds so that the model knows what previous job to reference in its new image. Until we have that, it’s going to unfortunately be a brand new image every time,” lamented Reshi.

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Meanwhile, another user Allen T, an AI storyteller based on his X bio, shared cover pages of a fictional manga series he created. Allen shared four cover pages in the series titled – ‘Demon Drift: Defense of the Dawn City’. 

“A 1980s Japanese manga style cover page of a young samurai battling a demon during the sengoku era called Demon Drift: Defense of the Dawn City,” read Allen’s prompt for one of the cover pages. 

All the cover images created using DALL-E 3 gave off the impression of Japanese comics from a long time ago. 

Dreaming Tulpa, a coder, took to X to share his manga experiment. He used DALL-E 3 to create visuals and animated them using Pika Labs. While introducing his work, the coder said that this was in a nascent stage and the output was like reading one’s favourite childhood comics and mangas with animated panels. “While image-to-video models are still very early, this isn’t just a fantasy anymore,” read the post. 

As mentioned above, creating images or comics is easy with the Bing Image creator. Head to Bing Image Creator, type the prompt that describes the image or comic you want to create and click on Create. Within a few seconds, the tool will show four options. You can later refine them as per your preference. We tried the DALL-E-powered Bing Image Creator, and here are some sample images with unedited text:

DALL-E Image Prompt: Create a four-panel comic of the rabbit and turtle fable. (Image: DALL-E) DALL-E comic Prompt: Create a comic of baby Jesus on kindness. (Image: DALL-E) Dall-E image Prompt: Create a comic on benefits of sunlight. (Image: DALL-E)

After a week, it was announced, DALL-E 3 made its way to the public through Microsoft’s Image Creator tool. On September 30, digital art creators took to Twitter and Reddit to share the enhanced image results and text interpretation capabilities. While OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the undisputed leader when it comes to AI chatbots, its DALL-E 3 faces competition from other prominent tools such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. 

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While DALL-E is creating unmatched graphics and visuals, not long ago the tool was subjected to legal entanglement. Several artists sued DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion in January this year for allegedly training their tools using billions of images scraped from the internet without the consent of the original artists. In their lawsuit, artists Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz said that these companies violated the rights of millions of artists.

Bijin Jose, an Assistant Editor at Indian Express Online in New Delhi, is a technology journalist with a portfolio spanning various prestigious publications. Starting as a citizen journalist with The Times of India in 2013, he transitioned through roles at India Today Digital and The Economic Times, before finding his niche at The Indian Express. With a BA in English from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, and an MA in English Literature, Bijin's expertise extends from crime reporting to cultural features. With a keen interest in closely covering developments in artificial intelligence, Bijin provides nuanced perspectives on its implications for society and beyond. ... Read More

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