With new AI tools allowing anyone to generate custom videos, images, and music at the click of a button, is shelling out for a subscription to Envato Elements even worth it anymore?
Envato Elements has long served creators, marketers, and businesses through its stock library of millions of assets from video clips to music tracks to photos and templates. But the rapid advancement of AI is bringing about a seismic shift, providing low-cost and even free alternatives for generating media content tailored to your needs.
Between these emergent AI creation tools and the tried-and-true human-created assets on Envato, which option should you choose for your next creative project or marketing campaign? Weighing factors around quality, licensing, content diversity, and more, this article will provide an honest look at whether Envato Elements still brings enough value in the age of AI or if it’s time to make the switch to artificially intelligent creative tools.
What Does Envato Elements Offer?
Envato Elements provides subscribers unlimited access to a library of over a million creative assets for use in both personal and commercial projects. The downloadable assets span video clips, music tracks, sound effects, images, graphics, templates for editing, and more.
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New files get added each week, so subscribers always have fresh dynamic content. Licensing terms allow you to use the assets in commercial applications like social ads, websites, YouTube videos, and presentations after paying the subscription fee. The assets can be edited and adapted as long as they meet guidelines around not re-distributing or re-selling them in competing libraries.
Compared to paying per asset, Envato Elements offers exceptional value, saving over 90% for users who need a steady stream of media content. For creatives and businesses alike, it’s a huge vault of creative resources in one place.
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The Growing Popularity of AI Content Generation
Advances in AI over recent years have led to an explosion of tools that allow easy creation of custom video, image, audio, and text content. With generative algorithms powering them, these AI tools simply require the user to provide a text prompt describing what they want to generate.
Popular options include services like Runway, Descript, and Synthesia for video, Getty Images' Create for still images, and Play.ht's AI Music Studio for audio. Free browser-based AI image generators like DALL-E 2, MidJourney, and StarryAI also excel at producing stunning visuals. On the text front, tools like Jasper, INK blots, and Rytr leverage GPT-3 for writing marketing copy, essays, and more in seconds.
Many of these AI content creators are low or no-cost for a limited generation. While output quality can vary, the tech is improving rapidly. For businesses and creators alike, they make easy work out of resource-intensive media production. With customizable, autonomously-created content on demand, these AI tools threaten long-reliant creative services like stock asset subscriptions and freelancers.
Free AI Tools for Content Generation
AI is offering a dynamic landscape in content creation and has become a game-changer, enabling users to generate compelling and diverse content with ease. Here, we explore several free AI tools that empower creators to enhance their projects without breaking the bank.
1. Runway ML
Runway ML offers a user-friendly interface, making AI accessible for creators without extensive technical expertise.
Features: Supports various models for image, text, and audio generation. Allows experimentation with real-time previews.
Use Cases: Ideal for artists, designers, and developers exploring creative AI applications.
2. Deep Dream Generator
Deep Dream Generator employs neural networks to transform images into dreamlike, surreal creations.
Features: Customizable parameters, multiple style options, and the ability to process existing images.
Use Cases: Perfect for artists seeking unique visual effects and abstract imagery.
3. Google's AutoML Natural Language
Google's AutoML Natural Language enables users to build custom machine-learning models for text analysis.
Features: Sentiment analysis, entity recognition, and content classification without extensive coding.
Use Cases: Bloggers, marketers, and writers looking to analyze and understand textual content.
4. JukeBox by OpenAI
JukeBox is an AI model designed to generate music in various genres and styles.
Features: Creates full songs based on user inputs, allowing customization of lyrics and musical elements.
Use Cases: Musicians, content creators, and video producers seeking royalty-free music.
5. Lumen5
Lumen5 is an AI-driven video creation platform that transforms text content into engaging video presentations.
AI Features: Automated video creation, text-to-speech, and image suggestions for dynamic visual storytelling.
Use Cases: Content creators, marketers, and social media managers aiming to repurpose text-based content into engaging videos.
6. Artbreeder
Artbreeder enables users to create and explore unique images by blending and modifying existing ones.
Features: Intuitive interface, sliders for fine-tuning, and the ability to share and collaborate on creations.
Use Cases: Visual artists, photographers, and designers experimenting with image manipulation.
7. GPT-3 Playground
OpenAI's GPT-3 Playground allows users to interact with the powerful language model for text generation.
Features: Generates human-like text based on prompts, making it versatile for various writing tasks.
Use Cases: Writers, bloggers, and developers exploring advanced natural language processing.
8. Designify
Designify is an AI-powered design tool that automates the creation of visuals for social media and marketing.
Features: Offers templates for various platforms, automated text placement, and color customization.
Use Cases: Social media managers, marketers, and small businesses creating eye-catching graphics.
9. Vista Create
Vista Create is a graphic design tool with AI features that simplify the design process for users with varying skill levels.
AI Features: Design suggestions, resizing options, and animated templates for dynamic visual content.
Use Cases: Social media marketers, small businesses, and content creators looking for an easy-to-use design platform.
10. Pixlr
Pixlr is a robust photo editing tool that incorporates AI-driven features to enhance and modify images.
AI Features: Auto-adjustments, background removal, and intelligent retouching for professional-looking photos.
Use Cases: Photographers, influencers, and hobbyists seeking powerful yet accessible photo editing.
These free AI tools open up exciting possibilities for content creators across different domains. As technology advances, the democratization of AI continues, making innovative tools accessible to everyone, regardless of their technical background.
Comparing the Costs
When it comes to expenses, Envato Elements holds its own against increasingly cheap AI alternatives. An Envato Elements annual subscription runs about $198/year for unlimited asset downloads. Compared to à la carte pricing of $1 for an image, $5 for a track of music or $30 for a video clip, it saves creators over 90% if they use at least 30 assets per month.
Meanwhile, AI content creation tools have radically lower costs. Text generation tools like Jasper and Rytr start free for limited use before paid plans kick in for more features. The video and image AI platforms offer free tiers for up to 100-200 generations per month, then charge only $30-50/month—much less than one Envato subscription. Audio generation tools also follow this freemium model.
The caveat is licensing restrictions; most AI platforms prohibit commercial use of media assets without paying additional fees, unlike Envato. But with the staggering volume discounts compared to individually purchasing assets, AI tools boast strong price competitiveness. Savvy creators may supplement occasional AI generation with an Envato subscription for more flexible licensing rights.
The Human Touch On Envato Elements - A Key Difference
Unlike the automated output of AI content creators, the media assets offered by Envato Elements provide the refinement, nuance, and purpose that only human creators can deliver. AI-generated video, images, audio, and text often suffer flaws from distorted visuals to eerie oddities detected by human observers.
The contributing artists and musicians on Envato painstakingly craft creative assets optimized for commercial use. Their remarkable volumes of content span diverse styles, topics, and applications that machines cannot replicate or compile on their own. For example, an AI image generator may successfully composite a beach photo when prompted, but likely will not match the quality, consistency, and breadth of Envato's 82,000+ beach images shot by professionals.
Further, Envato Elements leverages human curation in compiling its stock asset library around relevance, diversity, and demand signals. This ensures subscribers can efficiently discover media content tailored to any use case that adheres to consumer tastes and preferences shaped by fellow humans. With AI, the onus falls more on the user to filter quality from computer-produced volume.
In an age of increasingly capable machines, the human creative spark at the core of Envato Elements persists as its trump card in adding strategic value.
Is Envato Elements Still Competitive?
In the face of AI advancements that enable cheap, on-demand creation of videos, images, audio, and more, Envato Elements stands at an inflection point in demonstrating its value. For some use cases, AI generation may fulfill needs. But Envato boasts compelling strengths that still position it as the superior choice in many scenarios.
For creators and businesses focused on professional quality and creative diversity not yet matched by AI, Envato delivers. The breadth of content specialized for commercial applications gives it an edge over what emerging generative tech can offer. Envato's licensing model also allows the adaptation and editing of assets that keep it legally compliant, unlike more restrictive AI platforms.
However, AI will continue advancing exponentially, progressively matching and exceeding human capability over time in readapting reference content. For cost-conscious users less worried about current quality gaps or needing unique creative expressions, AI presents immense upside.
In the end, Rather than a binary choice between services, savvy creators can employ Envato assets as a base for AI enhancement and adaptation to fuse the best of both offerings. With prudent balancing, Envato Elements can fight off full disruption even amidst seismic industry changes driven by machine creativity. This hybrid path may pave the way forward in extracting maximum value.
