Integrating AI Image Generation APIs: DALL-E 3, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney

Integrating AI image generation requires choosing the right API for your use case. Options: 1) DALL-E 3 (OpenAI): highest prompt adherence, safe defaults, simple API. response = openai.images.generate(model="dall-e-3", prompt=prompt, n=1, size="1024x1024", quality="hd"); image_url = response.data[0].url. Auto prompt enhancement rewrites prompts - can disable with prompt engineering. 2) Stable Diffusion via Replicate: maximum flexibility, many models (SDXL, FLUX, ControlNet), open source models. replicate.run("stability-ai/sdxl:...", input={"prompt": prompt, "negative_prompt": "ugly, blurry"}). 3) Midjourney: best aesthetic quality for creative applications but no official API - use Discord API or third-party services. Prompt engineering for images: be specific about style, medium, lighting, composition. Negative prompts remove unwanted elements. Use reference images for style consistency. Production considerations: 1) Content moderation: run NSFW classifier on outputs before serving. 2) Caching: identical prompts should return cached results (hash prompt + params as cache key). 3) Async processing: generation takes 5-30 seconds - use job queue pattern with status polling. 4) Storage: store generated images in S3/CDN, not as data URLs. 5) Watermarking: add subtle watermark for AI-generated content attribution.