Do free AI headshot generators work?
Yes and no. The answer really depends on the quality you are looking for.
First of all, free AI headshot generators will never be even close to as good as professional paid ones.
Why?
Because if you want to make high quality, realistic looking headshots with AI, you need to first train a custom AI image model on photos of yourself.
This process costs several dollars in computing power (electricity).
No company can afford to allow users to do this for free.
Even Canva, which is worth billions of dollars, has a low-quality AI headshot generator. I wrote here about the Canva AI headshot generator
Here is a side-by-side comparison of my free AI headshot from Canva vs a professional AI headshot from Cartario
The quality is not even close. The Cartario headshot looks realistic and professional. The Canva one looks like a drawing.
Free vs Paid AI Headshot Generators
I created my Canva headshot in 30 seconds. I only needed to upload 1 image of myself in order to generate this.
This means that I didn’t train a custom, fine-tuned, model on myself. That is why it was so fast (and cheap for Canva). It is also why the quality is so poor.
With Cartario, I needed to first upload 8 photos of myself. Then the custom training took about 30 minutes.
This would cost Cartario several dollars to do in electricity costs. But the results are night and day.
This is the difference between all free and paid AI headshot generators. The free ones don’t train a custom model (they are a gimmick basically).
Why are there so many free AI headshot generators if they don’t work well?
People are searching for free AI headshot generators, so offering them can bring a lot of free website traffic.
The hope is that people will use the free tool, and then hopefully buy something else.
For example, Canva can find new customers who start using this free tool. Then some of these new customers will upgrade and buy a paid Canva plan.
What is the best free AI headshot generator?
I’ve tried a bunch and none of them are very good. If you want to get an idea of how they work, then just use the Canva one to see for yourself.
The only reason to ever use one of these free tools is for the fun of it.
What is the best professional AI headshot generator?
Cartario is the best AI headshot generator.
Learn how to generate AI headshots with Cartario
Look at these incredible AI-generated headshots for LinkedIn
Cartario is great because it uses the high-resolution Flux 1.1 model to train and generate images. Flux models make the most realistic images of people.
Cartario gives you 100% control of your custom AI model. You can create any image you want of yourself for your headshot or profile pic. Most professional headshot generators just email you 100 or so pre-made headshots. You don’t get the customization though.
Another great thing about Cartario AI headshots is the fact that Cartario is fine-tuned to generate the most realistic looking headshots on the market. Cartario isn’t just using Flux 1.1. It is using a specific set of parameters that produce the best results. That is why their headshots look so good.
