How Freepik Remodeled From a Inventory Picture Platform Right into a Generative AI Powerhouse

Fifteen years in the past, Freepik was simply one other inventory picture supplier, serving to designers discover the fitting visuals for his or her tasks. At this time, it is a utterly totally different beast—a generative AI hub attracting over 60 million guests a month.

The shift wasn’t unintended. It was the results of an organization keen to rethink its function and transfer past static photographs to one thing a lot larger: a completely AI-powered inventive ecosystem.

Sitting in his lounge , Freepik CEO Joaquín Cuenca Abela spoke with Decrypt in regards to the state of the AI trade and the way his firm harnessed the chance generative AI introduced for digital artists.

“When generative AI appeared, we noticed we might broaden our mission,” he advised Decrypt. “We had been not restricted to serving to designers with pre-made content material. As an alternative, we might adapt to what they wanted and create one thing distinctive for every individual.”

The transfer paid off. Freepik is now a one-stop store for AI-powered picture and video technology, upscaling, animation, and extra. Cuenca Abela put it merely: “We simply wish to give creatives extra management.”

From clean web page to AI engine

Freepik began with a easy premise: get rid of the frustration of looking at a clean web page. Earlier than AI, the platform supplied tens of millions of inventory photographs and templates that creatives might use as beginning factors.

“The slowest, most painful a part of the inventive course of was ranging from zero,” Cuenca Abela stated. “We helped get rid of that barrier by giving designers tens of millions of photographs they might start creating with.”

Now, with generative AI, Freepik doesn’t simply provide a library of content material—the agency creates it on demand.“A photographer wasn’t a standard Freepik consumer,” stated Cuenca Abela. “They already had their photographs. However now, with our upscaler Magnific, they will improve them in methods they by no means might earlier than.”

The shift has broadened its viewers past graphic designers. Photographers use it to boost, tweak, and upscale photographs. Filmmakers experiment with AI-generated visuals, architects and inside designers construct ideas in ways in which had been as soon as time-consuming and costly, and the common Joe makes use of it to generate stunning waifus—as a result of, after all, it’s AI we’re speaking about.

Not simply one other picture generator

Within the crowded AI house, Freepik is specializing in workflow integration. Most AI instruments focus on one factor, be it picture technology, video creation, or upscaling. Freepik connects all of them, appearing like a hub that integrates totally different open- and closed-source generative AI instruments in a single place.

Amongst different providers, the corporate’s AI suite consists of:

• Picture technology with fashions like Mystic, Flux, Ideogram, and Google Imagen
• Customized LoRA coaching for constant character and magnificence technology
• Video technology utilizing seven totally different fashions, together with Google’s Veo2, Hunyuan, Luma, Kling, Hailuo, and Minimax
• Enhancing instruments for inpainting, outpainting, filters and seamless picture enlargement
• Audio technology, together with music, voice-over, and sound results
• SVG conversion capabilities for vector-based belongings.

One of many greatest success tales has been Magnific, Freepik’s AI-powered upscaler. It went viral for its potential to boost picture particulars with out distorting them—one thing even top-tier AI fashions have struggled with.

Then, Mystic was the icing on the cake, offering outcomes that had been able to competing in opposition to state-of-the-art fashions like Ideogram or MidJourney. Mystic is definitely a workflow, utilizing Flux as a core mannequin with loads of tweaks behind the scenes.

That stated, loads of specialists and fanatics have tried to mimic Freepik’s secret sauce—which depends on open-source fashions—with mixed results. Freepik has a approach to supply high quality outcomes, persistently, with the perfect consumer interface attainable, which is what clients are paying for.

“Folks generally underestimate the distinction between product and a very good product,” Cuenca Abela stated. “The final 10% takes 90% of the trouble. That’s why many tried replicating Magnific, however could not fairly nail it.”

The copyright debate

With AI-generated content material comes controversy. Many artists argue that AI builders unfairly practice their fashions using copyrighted works with out permission. Cuenca Abela doesn’t dismiss their considerations, however stated he sees the problem otherwise.

“If you happen to required permission from each particular person creator to coach an AI mannequin, these fashions merely couldn’t exist,” he stated. “It’d be like asking permission to index each single internet web page earlier than launching Google.”

He acknowledges the strain.

“This within the brief time period damages the artist—utilizing one thing created by the artist. For the [affected] artists, it is a state of affairs of profound injustice,” he advised Decrypt, recognizing that such development pressured them to evolve as enterprise. “One thing related occurred to us. When (AI) emerged, our enterprise out of the blue introduced much less worth to the desk. We needed to adapt.”

That stated, he argues that AI-generated photographs aren’t direct copies. “The criticism conventional artists often have is that their photographs had been used with out permission, which is completely true,” he admitted. “However the counterpoint is that the pictures these fashions produce aren’t copies. If an individual had made them, there wouldn’t be a declare of copyright infringement.”

The core of the talk is mainly the trade-off between inventive management and technological progress. Cuenca Abela believes society will finally favor AI’s advantages—simply because it did when related debates surrounded photography killing portray, digital art killing conventional artwork, or internet search engines killing encyclopedias.

“As a society, we’ll must stability issues and decide. If permission from the creator is required to coach a mannequin, generative fashions for textual content and pictures will not exist.” he stated. “[If that happens, then] society loses all of the progress that textual content fashions present. They may help us discover vaccines, medicines; the scientific developments they will convey are super. All that progress is misplaced.”

Cuenca additionally sees AI as a software for self expression. He doesn’t differentiate AI artists from artists.

“There’s no distinction. It’s a software. AI is a way to precise what you need, and artwork is the expression of what’s inside you, what occurred to you, your life experiences—properly, you are able to do that with AI, with work, with pictures… It’ll depend upon the artist,” he advised Decrypt.

“For me, it’s completely artwork and it’s respectable. I don’t have an moral downside with that.”

Open fashions vs. closed techniques

There was once consensus about closed-source being the go-to possibility for finish customers, with fashions and applied sciences often being extra user-friendly and offering a better-quality expertise than open choices. Nonetheless, issues have drastically modified through the years.

Stable Diffusion revolutionized AI artwork, Llama was key to bringing native textual content technology to the lots, and extra just lately, DeepSeek R1 reignited the talk about closed-source AI firms overcharging for their models.

Nonetheless, some customers nonetheless desire closed-source choices. Cuenca Abela has robust opinions in regards to the AI trade’s future, notably within the battle between open-source and proprietary fashions.

“When it comes to code, state-of-the-art open-source is on the identical stage as proprietary fashions,” he stated. “The most important distinction is coaching time and dataset curation, an extended post-training part, a bit higher tagging, and many others. However as for technical stage, I do not see a lot of a spot.”

Whereas proprietary fashions like MidJourney and Ideogram get extra refinement, Cuenca sees open-source options closing the hole shortly. He factors to Flux for instance: “It could be a tiny step behind the perfect closed fashions, however not two steps. And since it’s open, the neighborhood fine-tunes and builds on it, generally surpassing the closed variations.”

For Freepik, selection and adaptability are the priorities. “Somebody who is aware of how you can use Freepik will get higher high quality than MidJourney,” Cuenca Abela stated. “If you happen to want photorealism, we have now Google Imagen. If you happen to want inventive textual content technology, use Ideogram. If you happen to want character consistency, practice a LoRA. No single mannequin is the reply to every thing.”

In different phrases, there’s no jack of all trades in AI. And the flexibility of selecting open and closed-source fashions on demand is extraordinarily necessary to get the granularity required for the right murals—one that actually resembles what the consumer has in thoughts.

Freepik’s AI video wager

Just lately, Freepik has doubled down on AI-powered video instruments. The corporate integrated Google’s Veo 2, which dramatically improves video technology high quality.

“Earlier than Veo 2, you needed to generate 10 or 20 movies to get one which labored,” Cuenca Abela notes. “Now, with Veo 2, you get consequence each different strive.”

However the true game-changer for video artists will probably be an upcoming AI video editor, he stated. As an alternative of simply producing brief clips, customers will quickly have the ability to assemble full movies solely inside Freepik.

“At this time you’ll be able to solely make video clips—solely generate small clips of two seconds, 3 seconds, 8 seconds. We’re engaged on one thing that permits individuals to edit them on the web page itself, add audio, and do the entire composition in order that you find yourself along with your clip,” Cuenca Abela advised Decrypt.

“The purpose is to make Freepik the inventive hub the place you don’t want to go away the platform to complete a venture,” he stated.

The way forward for AI: Alternative or concern?

Are we near synthetic normal intelligence, or AGI? Will machines substitute us? Cuenca Abela sees AI’s speedy improvement as each thrilling and unsettling.

“[AGI] feels shut now—a lot nearer than anybody anticipated only a few years in the past,” he admitted. “We went from individuals dismissing AI as a toy to machines that may assume.”

There may be not really consensus about what precisely constitutes AGI, however it may be broadly conceived as a sort of synthetic intelligence that may perceive, study, and apply data throughout mainly any discipline at a human-like stage or past, being able to adapting to new issues. We’re at present in a state of “slim AI,” with fashions that excel at some issues however underperform at others.

That shift, he argued, raises massive existential questions. “Machines may be paused, restarted, or copied. People can’t. These variations matter,” he stated. “It means we’ll all the time have a novel place alongside expertise.”

Whereas some concern AI changing human creativity, Cuenca Abela stays optimistic about its potential. “I believe this can trigger a really profound and powerful acceleration that feels a bit overwhelming. We don’t know what we’ll have the ability to obtain sooner or later.”

A bit extra all the way down to earth, he thinks the speedy future could convey us extra instruments that assist machines perceive precisely what the consumer needs, being rather more correct and offering higher-quality outcomes. And Freepik’s new philosophy seems to level towards that course, changing into a hub during which artists can discover every thing they should flip an AI technology into their very own imagined murals.

“That is our mission: Serving to individuals make nice designs to precise the facility of their concepts,” stated Cuenca Abela. “AI for us is only a software—however it’s how individuals work together with AI that issues.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward