What is FLUX.1, a new open-source AI image generator to take on Midjourney?

The latest batch of AI-generated photos to take social media by storm features close-ups of men and women talking into microphones presumably onstage at what appears to be a conference or some kind of event. Having first surfaced on a Reddit thread dedicated to AI-generated content, the realistic depiction of the skin, hair, and wrinkles of the men and women in the images have sparked a lot of buzz online.

These pictures were generated using a newly launched text-to-image AI model called FLUX.1 that has been developed by Black Forest Labs, a company based in Germany.