Create Consistent Characters within ComfyUI
ComfyUI is an AI tool for creating images, videos, and animations. This page talks about the workflow for creating consistent characters for stories.
Blog posts
Episode 70: Community Hour + InGrasp Demo
Recording of Bryan Jones demonstrating the new InGrasp tool for creating custom character images for scenarios for the ONILP group.
LABS.GOOGLE
Google Labs has an "Experiments" page with a collection of AI tools for a variety of purposes. These are very explicitly experimental and probably not ready for production environments. I also expect many of them will disappear later (this is Google, after all--look at their track record). Still, this looks like a fun site to spend some time exploring what tools can do right now.
AnimateAI
Create animated videos with AI. Start by generating characters, which the site says will be consistent throughout your story. You can turn scripts into storyboards and customize them. Then, create videos in 30-second clips. The voice syncing doesn't look great in their demo videos, but this still might be worth experimenting with. The free plan should be enough to test it out.
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Cassidy | The AI Workspace for your team
Want to use LLMs like ChatGPT but need a more secure option? Cassidy is designed for working securely within organizations
Consistent Character AI
A tool for creating character images with the ability to edit expressions, poses, head position, and more. Currently in beta. No free plan, but this has a lot more options than most similar tools.
Free AI photo editor - Edit images online with AI | Freepik
Freepik's online image editor includes some non AI-features like cropping and color adjustments plus some AI features like generating variations and AI backgrounds. Limited generations and downloads on the free plan.
AI Consistent Character Creator: Poses, Faces & Headshots
Another character image generator
MagicQuill
MagicQuill is an online image editing tool focused on AI inpainting of existing images. Upload and image and draw the shape of what you want to add or change in the image. The tool guesses what you want and generates a text prompt for you. If it guesses right, you can run it and generate the edited image. If it guesses wrong, you can tweak the prompt. Open source tool with a CC license; you can get the source code and run it on your own server if you want.
Rate My Site: Rate your site in seconds – get instant feedback.
AI-generated feedback on website design. Enter a URL and get a score and feedback on the visual design, layout and clarity, and content. The site provides recommendations for improvements as well. As with all things AI, the recommendations should be viewed with some skepticism, but I found it overall reasonably accurate for the few sites I tested.
StoryArtAI - AI Kid Stories Art Generator
StoryArtAI is an AI image generator designed specifically for creating illustrations for children's books. This probably isn't the most useful tool for workplace training or adult learners, but it might be useful for K12 educators. The tool includes support for creating consistent characters and detailed prompting tips.
DeepBrain AI
Generate avatar videos from text. This tool lets you adjust the gestures for the presentation, as well as generating scripts from links or PowerPoint presentations. These videos definitely hit the uncanny valley and are clearly AI. Plus, how useful are talking head videos even when it's a real person, let alone an AI talking head? However, the free test might be worthwhile if you're interested in experimenting with these sorts of AI video avatars.
Image Upscaler - Upscale Your Photo for Free with AI
AI-powered image editing tools from a small Ukrainian company. Upscale, unblur, cartoonize, remove backgrounds. Use limited free credits per month or use promo code BESTEDITOR to buy credits.
One thing often happens at keynotes and conferences. It surprised me….
Don Clark shares several ways that people with dyslexia are benefiting now from using AI tools. Text-to-Speech, transcription, grammar and spelling assistants, note-taking and summarizing, and other tools can all help people with dyslexia.
3D AI Studio - Create Custom 3D Models with AI
Instead of text to image, this tool lets you generate text to 3D model. You can also generate an image in another tool like Midjourney or Flux and then generate a 3D model from a reference image.
One of the challenges for developing training in VR has always been the development time and cost, including time to develop custom 3D assets. This feels like a step towards making 3D development much more affordable and faster.
Img2Go.com - Online photo editor and image converter
Multiple image generation and editing tools powered by AI. Upscaling, background removing, face blurring (automatically detecting all the faces in a crowd and blurring them all for privacy), inpainting, image comparison. This site has some basic image editing tools like cropping, rotating, and compressing as well. The basic plan is free, with paid plans for credits for more advanced tools.
PartyRock
PartyRock is an Amazon tool to build apps with AI. You provide a prompt describing what you want the app to do, and it builds an app for you. Melissa Milloway has been sharing some experiments with this tool, including an app for building a video planner with shot planning based on a script.
Captions | Your AI-powered creative studio
AI tool for editing videos, including adding captions, removing filler words, adjusting eye contact, and more. I wish they had more transparency on their pricing though--you can't see the cost of subscriptions unless you create an account.
Wizardshot - Create AI-Powered Step-By-Step Tutorials In Seconds
This is a Chrome extension to capture your clicks and automatically create tutorials, similar to Scribe.
RenderNet: Create AI images with character consistency
RenderNet is an AI image generation tool specifically designed for creating consistent characters
AI Story Generator (Free, No Signup & Unlimited)
This seems like something that could be done with a combination of other tools (an LLM plus an image generator), but this is a tool that creates stories plus images to accompany them. It would be interesting to experiment with as inspiration for training scenarios. However, note that the site claims copyright of all stories created, so don't plan to use this for commercial purposes. Use it for inspiration rather than as the actual content of a story.
Vidnoz AI Tools: Create FREE Engaging AI Videos 10X Faster
Vidnoz AI has several tools. Their AI video generator is similar to Synthesia, although the voices and avatars seem to be not quite as good. if you want to try out AI video generation, this looks like a great option for experimenting and exploring because you can generate 3 minutes of video for free. This site also has other tools, some with a freemium model, such as face swapping and background removal.
What AI Tools are Instructional Designers Using?
Connie Malamed asked IDs what AI tools they're using. While the expected answers of ChatGPT, ElevenLabs, and Synthesia were mentioned, there are a bunch of other AI tools on the list as well. Meeting and productivity tools were popular.
ResearchRabbit
AI tool for discovering and understanding research, including visualizing papers and understanding how different authors and researchers are connected.
Charisma — Storytelling powered by artificial intelligence
Charisma is an AI tool for creating and interacting with virtual characters. It can be used for gaming and VR application, but also for training and conversation simulations.
Consensus: AI Search Engine for Research
Curious about the research on a particular topic? Consensus searches research and provides summaries. If you ask a yes/no question on a well-researched topic, it will provide you with a color-coded yes/no/maybe summary. This doesn't work as well if there isn't much research on a particular topic (as is the case for a lot of L&D questions), but it's a good way to both get a quick glance at the research and to find sources so you can dig deeper on your own.
Visla: All-in-one Video Storytelling.
AI video tool for video editing and generation. Specifically, one of the features lets you edit videos by editing the transcript. This tool has a free plan with some limitations which look like plenty to at least test it out and potentially use if you need something quick.
Banner GPT
Paste the text of a blog post into this tool, and it generates banner images for you based on the title and content. Since I've been experimenting with AI for images for my blog already, this looks like a tool worth testing out. If you're not a blogger, perhaps this could help you create header images for Rise courses or similar content?
Transcript.LOL - Summary, Topics, & Ask Questions
Automatic transcripts including speaker identification plus summaries and additional info. Post the link to a recording, and it can transcribe it for you. This AI transcription tool has different levels of paid plans for larger volumes of media and additional features.
AI Learning and Development | Simulations
An AI tools database for learning and development, categorized by the type of tool. This database currently has 400+ tools.