Freepik, the online graphic design platform, has announced the release of F Lite, an open AI image generator trained entirely on commercially licensed, safe-for-work content. Developed in collaboration with AI startup Fal.ai, the model comprises approximately 10 billion parameters and was created using 64 Nvidia H100 GPUs over a span of two months.
The unveiling of F Lite marks Freepik’s entry into the growing but still niche market of generative AI systems trained exclusively on licensed datasets. The company offers two distinct versions of its new model: a “standard” model, described as more organized and prompt-faithful in its results, and a “texture” model, considered more creative but slightly unpredictable, delivering richer textural detail and artistic outcomes.
Freepik has made these models available to the public in an attempt to provide developers and businesses with an openly accessible tool that can be customized and improved in various use cases. While acknowledging that their new AI model is not necessarily superior in quality to market leaders like Midjourney’s latest generation or Black Forest Labs’ popular Flux series, Freepik emphasizes openness and transparency as core aims of this project.
Running the F Lite model, however, entails significant hardware demands. Users must have a GPU device featuring at least 24GB of VRAM, a requirement that places the technology primarily within the reach of professional researchers and developers with high-powered computational resources.
Generative AI continues to attract legal controversies due to widespread industry practices involving training models on vast quantities of publicly sourced online content, often including copyrighted materials. Companies leading this technology usually claim that their data usage practices constitute fair use, exempting them from having to compensate original content creators. However, numerous rights holders contest this stance, underpinning ongoing litigation against AI companies including OpenAI and Midjourney.
Freepik’s F Lite joins models from other market entrants such as Adobe, Shutterstock, Getty Images, Bria, and Moonvalley, who similarly emphasize licensed-data training to potentially avoid copyright conflicts. Depending upon how current legal cases resolve, this emerging domain could see rapid growth, driven by demand for ethical and legally compliant generative AI imagery technologies.
