Pixel Studio Is the Easiest (If Not the Best) Way to Create AI on Pixel 9
Google’s new Pixel 9 phones didn’t just bring hardware upgrades, they also brought with them a number of useful AI-powered apps, including the Screenshots app (for extracting information from screenshots) and the new Weather app . If you have a Pixel 9 device, you will also find another standalone app there called Pixel Studio.
It’s an app for quickly creating artificial images on your phone, and Google has clearly tried to make it as user-friendly as possible. However, it competes with many other competing applications. Here’s what you can do if you have Pixel Studio installed on your phone, as well as some alternatives you can try instead.
How to use Pixel Studio
Download Pixel Studio on your Pixel 9 phone and you’ll instantly get some examples of the art you can create: tap the tooltips at the top of the screen to see more examples. They can range widely in art style and themes, and there’s plenty to scroll through if you’re stuck looking for inspiration for your own projects.
To create your own picture, tap Create and write your invitation. This could be anything from “a bicycle leaning against a tree on a country road” to “a small spaceship hovering over a futuristic cityscape.” As always with these tips, the more detail you can include, the better – and the closer the picture will match what you want.
Click the art style button below the tooltip text to select a specific image type. By default it says Freestyle , but other options are available such as Anime and Cinematic . One limitation of Pixel Studio is that you can’t specify an art style (or dimensions, for that matter) on the command line, so you’ll have to use those presets.
Click on the checkmark to create an image. Icons below AI images allow you to recreate another image using the same clue, change the art style, and provide feedback on the image quality. If you create a new image, it is added to your gallery rather than replacing an existing one. At the top there are icons for saving, sharing, copying and deleting the image.
You can then select Stickers and Tools to apply some basic changes to the new image. You can add captions and stickers, and select parts of the image, which you can then move, resize, or erase (using additional AI tricks). It’s all pretty basic, and you won’t get as much control as you would in a real photo editing app.
Back on the main Pixel Studio screen, you can find all the images you’ve created by tapping the folder icon in the top left corner. You can also tap the photo icon (to the right of the Create button) to add stickers, captions, and other edits to an image in your phone’s gallery, but you can’t use those images as the basis for AI suggestions.
It’s a fun and easy-to-use option if you need some AI stuff – to get into a group chat, for example – and in some ways it’s similar to what you get with Apple Intelligence on the iPhone. However, you don’t get much control over your final image and currently can’t include people in your images.
Other AI Image Generators
There’s no shortage of options if you want artificial image creation capabilities beyond what Pixel Studio offers, and if you want the best results in terms of quality, as well as maximum flexibility in terms of hints and editing, then you’ll probably want look elsewhere for an AI image app.
Google’s own Gemini is a good place to start: it’s now available for both iOS and Android . It gives all users the ability to create artificial intelligence using the Imagen 3 model (just like Pixel Studio). Simply enter your prompt as you go, including all the details you want to see and the art style you choose. The only limitation: you can’t create images of people unless you pay $20 a month for Gemini Advanced .
There is also ChatGPT for Android and iOS , based on the DALL-E 3 image model . As with Gemini, there’s no dedicated image generator component—you simply tell ChatGPT what you want to see as you talk to it, including details like art style if appropriate. You don’t have to be a paid user to create art, images of people are allowed, but free users are limited to two generations per day .
ChatGPT gives you a few more image editing options: you can use hints to tweak what’s already been created and select specific parts of the image to make changes. For example, you can highlight windows in an interior shot and ask for different weather outside.
You also have Copilot for Android and iOS , which works similarly to Gemini and ChatGPT, with a built-in image generator that’s free to use. (It also uses DALL-E 3.) You can specify your choice of art styles and create images of anything you like (including people), but you don’t get anything in the way of editing features.
As for Midjourney, while it’s undoubtedly one of the best AI image generators out there right now, it doesn’t currently have a mobile app: you’ll need to head to the website . You can do this on a phone, and the site adapts to a smaller screen quite well, but the experience won’t be as smooth as the dedicated app.
Midjourney is hard to beat for the quality and variety of images it produces, as well as the flexibility you get in terms of art styles. You also get plenty of editing options: you can remix, pan a scene, or create subtle variations on what’s already been rendered. Flaw? It’s not free: you’ll have to pay $10 a month to create the images.
Is Pixel Studio the best solution for your needs?
Pixel Studio is certainly not the most advanced in terms of the features and quality of images you can create, but it is fast (thanks to the built-in Gemini Nano model) and free (after payment). your pixel 9). If you need something quick and not too complicated, this is ideal.
Gemini is the next best option if you don’t want to pay for another subscription (assuming you don’t want people in your images). I’m tempted to use Gemini for more complex AI image suggestions, but otherwise stick with Pixel Studio because it has a more user-friendly interface and a greater variety of editing tools.