Inspiration
I came across this Reddit post a week back that highlighted some of the issues in Canva and some of the users were complaining about generative AI features in Canva as it isn't as good as midjourney or stable diffusion so I tried it as well and felt some images were hallucinating as well. Tried some of the image generator apps in the Canva app marketplace as well and felt it had the same issues that users were complaining about. This is how MidGen AI was born.
What it does
This is an image generation and upscaling tool built into Canva. You can use prompts to get the images you need and can also upscale the existing images you have. Just enter the prompt and wait for 25 seconds, It'll be done by then and you can get the image. Same for the upscaling feature as well, select the image and it'll automatically replace the old image with the upscaled version.
How we built it
For the front end, we had to use Canva Apps SDK with typescript and it was easy to understand and work with as well. For the backend, I used express js as I've used it in my side projects as well. The models were fine-tuned to get good image clarity and precise details as well.
Challenges we ran into
The most important challenge was learning Canva Apps SDK as it was nice to me and never used it before as well. The learning curve wasn't that difficult and played with this to get the idea of how it works. Time was also a challenge as this app was built in under a week so had to juggle with work with building this app as well. The model was fine-tuned for this app and it took a while to get the right parameters to get a good image without much hallucinations as well.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I'm proud that I've learned something in under a week and built a project with it that users can use as well. Never used Canva Apps SDK so making a project with it in under a week was something nice and learned a lot about it as well. Fine-tuning was something new as well but somehow made it work for this project.
What we learned
The most important learning point was Canva Apps and learned it enough to make an app out of it as well. And, I would say Canva is a good place to build apps as there are a lot of users who can benefit from this so they can use the same platform to get their desired results.
What's next for MidGen AI
Next up is to add authentication and monetization features so users can have a paid plan to experience some new features as well. I would make this app to generate much more realistic images and generate videos from that as well so they can be used as AI avatars as well.
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