How Freepik Transformed From a Stock Image Platform Into a Generative AI Powerhouse

Fifteen years in the past, Freepik was simply one other inventory picture supplier, serving to designers discover the correct visuals for his or her initiatives. At the moment, it is a fully 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 artistic ecosystem.

Sitting in his lounge , Freepik CEO Joaquín Cuenca Abela spoke with Decrypt concerning 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 develop our mission,” he advised Decrypt. “We have been now not restricted to serving to designers with pre-made content material. As a substitute, we might adapt to what they wanted and create one thing distinctive for every particular person.”

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 need to give creatives extra management.”

From clean web page to AI engine

Freepik began with a easy premise: get rid of the frustration of observing a clean web page. Earlier than AI, the platform offered hundreds of thousands of inventory photographs and templates that creatives might use as beginning factors.

“The slowest, most painful a part of the artistic course of was ranging from zero,” Cuenca Abela mentioned. “We helped get rid of that barrier by giving designers hundreds of thousands of photographs they may start creating with.”

Now, with generative AI, Freepik doesn’t simply supply a library of content material—the agency creates it on demand.“A photographer wasn’t a conventional Freepik person,” mentioned 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 have 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 area, Freepik is specializing in workflow integration. Most AI instruments specialise in one factor, be it picture technology, video creation, or upscaling. Freepik connects all of them, performing 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 elegance technology
• Video technology utilizing seven totally different fashions, together with Google’s V2, Hunyuan, Luma, Kling, Hailuo, and Minimax
• Modifying instruments for inpainting, outpainting, filters and seamless picture growth
• Audio technology, together with music, voice-over, and sound results
• SVG conversion capabilities for vector-based property.

One of many largest 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 have been able to competing in opposition to state-of-the-art fashions like Ideogram or MirJourney. Mystic is definitely a workflow, utilizing Flux as a core mannequin with lots of tweaks behind the scenes.

That mentioned, lots of consultants and fanatics have tried to mimic Freepik’s secret sauce—which depends on open-source fashions—with mixed results. Freepik has a method to supply high quality outcomes, persistently, with the very best person interface potential, which is what prospects are paying for.

“Individuals typically underestimate the distinction between a great product and a very good product,” Cuenca Abela mentioned. “The final 10% takes 90% of the hassle. 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 prepare their fashions using copyrighted works with out permission. Cuenca Abela doesn’t dismiss their considerations, however mentioned he sees the problem in a different way.

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

He acknowledges the stress.

“This within the quick 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 comparable occurred to us. When (AI) emerged, our enterprise out of the blue introduced much less worth to the desk. We needed to adapt.”

That mentioned, he argues that AI-generated photographs aren’t direct copies. “The grievance conventional artists normally have is that their photographs have been used with out permission, which is completely true,” he admitted. “However the counterpoint is that the photographs 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 artistic management and technological progress. Cuenca Abela believes society will in the end favor AI’s advantages—simply because it did when comparable debates surrounded photography killing portray, digital art killing conventional artwork, or internet search engines killing encyclopedias.

“As a society, we’ll have to 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 mentioned. “[If that happens, then] society loses all of the progress that textual content fashions present. They might help us discover vaccines, medicines; the scientific developments they will deliver 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—effectively, you are able to do that with AI, with work, with images… It is going to depend upon the artist,” he advised Decrypt.

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

Open fashions vs. closed methods

There was consensus about closed-source being the go-to choice for finish customers, with fashions and applied sciences normally 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 plenty, and extra just lately, DeepSeek R1 reignited the talk about closed-source AI corporations overcharging for their models.

Nonetheless, some customers nonetheless favor closed-source choices. Cuenca Abela has sturdy opinions concerning the AI trade’s future, significantly within the battle between open-source and proprietary fashions.

“When it comes to code, state-of-the-art open-source is on the similar stage as proprietary fashions,” he mentioned. “The most important distinction is coaching time and dataset curation, an extended post-training section, 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 rapidly. He factors to Flux for example: “It is likely to be a tiny step behind the very best closed fashions, however not two steps. And since it’s open, the group fine-tunes and builds on it, typically surpassing the closed variations.”

For Freepik, selection and suppleness are the priorities. “Somebody who is aware of the right way to use Freepik will get higher high quality than MidJourney,” Cuenca Abela mentioned. “When you want photorealism, we now have Google Imagen. When you want inventive textual content technology, use Ideogram. When you want character consistency, prepare a LoRA. No single mannequin is the reply to all the things.”

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 essential to get the granularity required for the right murals—one that really resembles what the person has in thoughts.

Freepik’s AI video guess

Not too long ago, 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 a great outcome each different strive.”

However the true game-changer for video artists will probably be an upcoming AI video editor, he mentioned. As a substitute of simply producing quick clips, customers will quickly be capable of assemble full movies completely within Freepik.

“At the moment you possibly can 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 aim is to make Freepik the artistic hub the place you don’t want to depart the platform to complete a venture,” he mentioned.

The way forward for AI: Alternative or concern?

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

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

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

That shift, he argued, raises large existential questions. “Machines could be paused, restarted, or copied. People can’t. These variations matter,” he mentioned. “It means we’ll all the time have a novel place alongside know-how.”

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 be capable of obtain sooner or later.”

A bit extra all the way down to earth, he thinks the rapid future might deliver us extra instruments that assist machines perceive precisely what the person desires, being far more correct and offering higher-quality outcomes. And Freepik’s new philosophy seems to level towards that path, changing into a hub by which artists can discover all the things 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,” mentioned Cuenca Abela. “AI for us is only a software—nevertheless it’s how individuals work together with AI that issues.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward