Generative AI · intermediate · concept 166 of 311 · Updated Nov 4, 2026
Stable Diffusion & Text-to-Image
The open-source text-to-image model that democratized AI art. Works in a compressed latent space (not pixel space) for efficiency. SDXL and SD 3.5 produce photorealistic images from text prompts, and open-weight successors such as FLUX build on the same latent-diffusion recipe.
Top AI contributors on this
- Ian GoodfellowFormerly Google DeepMind
- Alec RadfordIndependent / Thinking Machines Lab (adviser)
- Mira MuratiThinking Machines Lab
- Alexandr ZhavoronkovInsilico Medicine
- Shakir MohamedGoogle DeepMind
Key terms
Latent diffusionCLIP text encoderU-NetControlNetLoRA
Learn these first
Where you meet it in the real world
AI art, product mockups, game asset generation, marketing visuals
Videos
▶ 11: Generative AI – Text-to-Image Models ↗
MIT OpenCourseWare · YouTube
▶ How AI Image Generators Work (Stable Diffusion / Dall-E) - Computerphile ↗
Computerphile · YouTube
Guides and articles
Courses, papers, and more