HiDream-I1

HiDream-I1 is a 17B model that makes crisp images from text fast. It’s open-source under MIT license and free for all uses, also completely uncensored and capable of NSFW image generation.

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Overview

HiDream-I1 is a free AI that turns your words into pictures. It’s built by the folks at vivago.ai and it’s packing 17 billion parameters. That’s a lot of brainpower. It uses this thing called Mixture of Experts setup with DiT blocks to work faster and smarter.

It’s loaded with four strong text encoders like CLIP and Llama 3 so it really gets what you’re saying. That means better images that actually match your prompt. You can check it out on GitHub or try it live on Hugging Face.

There's a ComfyUI Wrapper available already, but no Comfy native version yet.

It is pretty dang good. It beat models like DALL·E 3 and SDXL on some test scores like DPG-Bench and GenEval. These are tests that check how close the images match the prompt and how clean they look. spaces/HiDream-ai/HiDream-I1-Dev

There are three types. Full, Dev and Fast. Each one swaps image quality for speed in different ways.

Tests like GenEval, DPG-Bench and HPS-v2.1 say it ranks high in prompt handling and image output among open models. Other reviews from Decryption, Medium and NextDiffusion say it stands up to big names like Midjourney V6. Some people in the scene think it's close to pro-level like Flux dev builds but results can swing depending on the style.

HiDream-I1 Hardware Requirements for HiDream-I1

-> Requires Nvidia GPU.

4Bit Quantized Model (HiDream-I1-Fast-nf4):

GPU Architecture: NVIDIA >= Ampere (e.g. A100, H100, A40, RTX 3090, RTX 4090)
GPU RAM: >= 16 GB
CPU RAM: >= 16 GB

Bit of a side note. text_encoder_4 runs on Meta’s Llama 3.1-8B Instruct which isn't really fully open-source the way people usually expect.

That model follows Meta’s special license so you can’t just use it for anything you want. You gotta agree to their rules and you’re not allowed to share it freely.

So even though HiDream says it’s MIT licensed adding stuff based on Llama 3.1 would likely go against Meta’s rules.

That’s why they can’t just include text_encoder_4 in the repo. You gotta grab it yourself from Meta’s HuggingFace page.

Links

Text-to-Image

Educators and Trainers Creative Professionals Content Creators Media and Film Makers Marketing and Branding Specialists Developers and Tech Creators Nonprofit and Advocacy Creators Small Business Owners Entertainment and Performance Artists Professional Content Creators

This tool offers the following AI models:

This tool is free to use when installed locally and is offered under MIT License.

HiDream dropped with a loud claim —it’s being called the best open-source image model out there. But while some folks are impressed, others are hitting the brakes.

At first glance it looks solid. Prompt following is tight and tech heads like that it’s built with a Mixture of Experts setup which means it only fires up part of the model at a time. That should make it faster and lighter... in theory. If you quantize it hard enough it’ll even run on mid-range GPUs and work great for local use.

But right now the results aren’t blowing people away. Images have that overly-sharpened “AI made this” feel. Stuff like art style accuracy and subtle detail? Still lacking. It kind of struggles with creativity and anything complex or painterly. One guy called it “roughly at Flux Schnell quality” which ain’t exactly high praise.

Even though it handles some prompts okay the overall look still leans toward that generic overly-optimized vibe. It nails the words but flattens the soul of the picture. If you’re into technical upgrades it’s interesting but if you’re chasing visual magic it’s not quite there yet. Maybe with some fine-tunes and extra work it could turn into something better but for now it’s more promise than payoff.

[ Reddit ]

Prompt:

A painted woman, depicted in digital illustration style, her skin layered with visible brushstroke textures, stands perfectly centered in a realistic urban street, her posture quiet and composed. She holds a magenta umbrella, shielding herself from the soft rain that falls in streaks across the frame. Her face is turned slightly in profile, with the camera placed at eye level, using a symmetrical frontal composition, giving the scene a poised, contemplative stillness. Her hair transitions at the ends into delicate wisps of smoke, dyed in a vibrant palette of turquoise, purple, and gold—the smoke rising and trailing behind her in slow motion, airy and ethereal, subtly moving with the breeze. Her figure is rendered in a surreal, painterly digital style, with bold Van Gogh-inspired swirling brushstroke textures and glowing lighting. The texture of her skin and clothing contrasts against the realism of the street around her. Behind her, the busy contemporary city is photorealistic, with wet pavement reflecting colorful storefronts, passing people, cars, and trees. Every detail—the bus halting in the distance, neon shop signs glowing in puddles, and subtle reflections—is crisp and grounded. The sky is overcast, diffusing the light evenly and casting a cinematic, moody ambiance. The visual juxtaposition emphasizes two realities colliding: her surreal, painted presence vs the grounded cinematic realism of the city.

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Generated on August 26, 2025:

Image output — Quantized version in ComfyUI, using Q4 gguf

Prompt:

A natural beauty blonde woman with a confident and assertive pose is in the center looking at the viewer with fierce focused annoyed gaze, slightly dirty skin, wearing a slightly dirty Western-inspired outfit, including a Western-style hat, a dress with a vest-like undergarment, and a feminine yet strong aesthetic. She is pointing a large 8-Gauge Shotgun (aka 8-bore) straight in front of herself, at the viewer, with the massive barrel dominating the foreground and appearing exaggerated in size due to dramatic perspective, creating an intense visual focus. The style is a realistic photograph with a focus on cinematic quality, a still from a Western-themed film. The background consists of a series of buildings, a hint of a mountain range, and a rustic atmosphere.

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Generated on May 17, 2025:

Prompt:

First-person perspective of slow cycling, with the wind gently blowing against the face. In the front basket of the bicycle, a cute capybara wears a flower crown, and the flowers on its head sway in the wind. The road is lined with lush flowers and plants, with distant snow-capped mountains, white clouds, and a blue sky. The camera follows the cycling speed, constantly switching scenes.

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Generated on April 26, 2025:

Prompt:

Extremely hyper realistic super textural weird surreal psychedelic sofa made of patterns of human eyes, sets of toes, rows of teeth, lips colored in white, pink, purple, clear, translucent and bright pastel colors, sofa situated in the middle of a futuristic sci-fi looking wide empty room with semi-reflective steel-white walls and floor.

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Generated on April 26, 2025:

Prompt:

hamburger road restaurant in typical 1960s vibes with neon and a 1960s light blue american car parked on the side. The Sun goes down. Palm springs 1960s Kodak shot

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Generated on April 26, 2025:

Prompt:

Crescent Moon Sculpture with a town inside, made of quartz material, features autumn, with lights hanging from houses in the forest, creating a warm and cozy atmosphere. The warm lighting effect enhances the overall scene. The sculpture is set against a white background with a beautifully carved quartz base, showing exquisite details and bright colors, evoking a feeling of warmth and joy. 4k, high definition, clear, sharp, miniature.

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Generated on April 25, 2025:

Prompt:

A hyper-realistic miniature scene of tiny chefs cooking an egg in a frying pan on a stovetop. One tiny chef is standing on the handle, supervising the cooking process, while another chef is using a wooden stick to adjust the egg. A small toy dump truck filled with salt is parked nearby. The composition is warm and detailed, with soft lighting, a shallow depth of field, and a cinematic perspective. The atmosphere is whimsical and imaginative, inspired by a miniature photography style, with a close-up focus on tiny figures interacting with real-life objects.

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Generated on April 22, 2025:

Prompt:

A woman standing in a shower, mostly obscured behind a foggy, condensation-covered glass panel. Her body is hidden by steam and water droplets clinging to the glass, creating a distorted and abstract effect. However, she has just wiped a small area on the glass near her face with her hand, which still rests on the glass, pressing against the glass, revealing her face in sharp focus through the otherwise foggy surface. She appears to be looking outward through the cleared area. The rest of the image remains blurred by moisture, emphasizing the contrast between the sharp facial detail and the misty, hidden figure behind the glass. The lighting is yellow, low-key, soft, ambient, and diffused, creating a warm and intimate bathroom setting.

Generated on April 15, 2025:

Prompt:

A moody, textured photograph of delicate wildflowers ... prominently placed in the foreground, reaching upward and diagonally across the frame. ... The background features a dramatic landscape of dark, silhouetted mountain peaks against a deep teal-blue sky, filled with thick, painterly clouds. The water body below the mountains is still and dark, adding to the somber atmosphere. ... The lighting is diffused and slightly dim, enhancing the dreamlike, melancholic mood of the scene.

Generated on April 11, 2025:

Prompt:

A surreal and dynamic scene of a futuristic woman floating mid-air, as if suspended in time, evoking visuals akin to The Matrix. She has platinum-white hair flowing outward, defying gravity, and her serene expression conveys a sense of otherworldly calm. Her body is arched gracefully, arms outstretched, and her translucent white garments billow around her, caught in a moment of fluid motion. Neon blue wires intricately wrap around her arms, torso, and legs, glowing softly against her skin, giving her a high-tech, cybernetic aesthetic. The background is a futuristic, minimalistic space—a blurred out wide hall with glowing cyan lights, enhancing the sense of depth and timelessness. The scene is illuminated by diffused light, with cool cyan and teal tones casting soft highlights and subtle reflections. Small particles and shimmering light effects float around her, adding a sense of suspended reality and frozen action. The overall mood is frozen in time, cinematic, and futuristic, blending sleek sci-fi visuals with an artistic, ethereal touch, as if capturing a single moment of impossible grace.

Generated on April 11, 2025: