AMD gets GPU-quality AI art running on its NPUs

AMD and Stability AI on Monday said that the two companies have ported Stable Diffusion 3.0 Medium to Stability’s Amuse AI art generator, allowing improved image generation, and even text, running just on the NPU alone.

With most of the jaw-dropping advancements in AI art coming from the cloud (such as Google Veo 3) a new AI art model running locally on AMD’s PC processors wouldn’t seem to be newsworthy. But it’s a step forward for AMD, which has lagged behind some of the AI art advancements from Intel.

The new model will be part of Amuse 3.1, available for download from Stability AI. You’ll want to download the Stable Diffusion Medium model via the Amuse app, which we tried out in April when Amuse began adding text to video. The new model uses what’s known as BF16, which allows for a wider range of responses but less precision. It also looks way, way, better than some of the results I was able to generate in April.

Stable Diffusion Medium is already available via Amuse, but it has previously required a GPU, limiting the mass appeal. Now you can choose from either. As more and more laptops begin adding NPUs, this will open up local image generation to a wider audience.

Amuse 3.1 with Godzilla mural — Zoom in to read the prompt within Amuse, which involves a mural of Godzilla on a brick building.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

AMD provided a press preview last week, and I tried it out using an MSI Prestige A16 AI+ with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 processor inside, and a NPU with 50 TOPS. Each image (with 20 steps) took about 90 seconds to generate. That’s still far behind the cloud, but image generation on a local PC is unlimited.

Amuse still makes mistakes, and you’ll be able to tell if you look closely that it’s not created by human hands. But it’s steadily improving. Where will we be in a year or two?