OpenAI debuts DALL-E API so devs can integrate its AI artwork into their apps
Enlarge / Variations of "a photo of a happy corgi puppy with fancy sunglasses on sitting and facing forward, studio light, longshot" generated by OpenAI's DALL-E. (credit: OpenAI)
On Thursday, OpenAI announced the introduction of an API for its DALL-E image synthesis model that will allow developers to easily integrate its AI image generation technology into their apps. DALL-E, currently available as a standalone commercial service, allows people to generate novel 1024*1024 images from text descriptions called "prompts." The generated images can vary in style from photorealistic to abstract-and many styles in between.
OpenAI's new API allows software developers to feed an image prompt and other parameters into OpenAI's DALL-E engine over the Internet. OpenAI then generates the image on its servers and returns the image for display in the requesting app. (An API is a programming interface that allows different programs to talk to each other.)
Usage of the API requires registration with OpenAI and a private API key that allows access to the DALL-E generator. Additionally, OpenAI levies a fee for each image generated depending on image resolution. Images that are 1024*1024 cost $0.02 an image, 512*512 images cost $0.018 per image, and 256*256 images cost $0.016 per image.