Partly AI
Have you ever wondered what your personal photos might look like if transformed into stunning works of art by artificial intelligence? That’s exactly the magic behind Partly AI — a project born from curiosity, creativity, and a passion for blending technology with personal expression. Launched in early 2023, Partly AI offers a simple way to turn your favorite portrait photos into unique artistic renderings powered by generative AI.
The vision was clear from the start: to create a platform that bridges the gap between photography and art, making professional-quality AI-generated artwork accessible to everyone. In a world where AI is rapidly transforming creative industries, Partly AI stands out by providing a unique, secure, privacy-focused space where your cherished memories are reimagined with style and soul.
The Magic Behind Partly AI
At its core, Partly AI is about more than just technology—it’s about emotion and creativity. Photography captures a moment in time, but art captures the feelings behind it. By harnessing sophisticated AI algorithms, Partly AI analyzes your photos and transforms them into extraordinary artistic expressions across a variety of styles.
Whether you want to create a beautiful piece for your home or explore new creative possibilities with your photography, Partly AI makes it effortless and fun. The platform’s AI models have been trained on diverse artistic techniques, enabling them to generate personalized artwork that blends human creativity with machine intelligence.
Features That Make It Shine
Behind the sleek and intuitive interface lies a powerful set of features designed to delight users:
- One-click AI art generation: Instantly transform any photo with a single click.
- Multiple artistic styles: Choose from a range of AI-powered artistic interpretations.
- Custom commissions: Request personalized artwork that blends human and AI creativity.
- Privacy-first approach: Fully GDPR compliant with encrypted data handling to keep your photos safe.
- Instant results: A web-based platform that delivers your transformed images immediately.
Built with privacy and security at its heart, Partly AI ensures your photos remain protected throughout the entire process.
Building the Dream: The Technical Journey
Creating Partly AI was an intense and rewarding experience. I built the entire app in just about four weeks while working full-time—a whirlwind of coding, experimenting, and refining. The app itself is built using Elixir and Phoenix LiveView, leveraging the strengths of functional programming and real-time web capabilities.
Users upload 10-15 portrait photos, which then go through a multi-step AI-powered process:
- A face detection model identifies and extracts faces from the photos.
- A custom model is trained on these faces combined with others to learn the unique features of the user’s face.
- The app runs inference using various prompts to generate different artistic styles.
- Another model enhances the eyes, making them look natural and engaging.
- All images are upscaled to high resolution using an AI upscaling model.
- Finally, the images are compiled into a downloadable zip file, emailed to the user, and presented in a beautiful web gallery.
The AI models run on a dedicated server equipped with a powerful GPU, while the web app operates on a distributed cloud provider, ensuring smooth performance and scalability.
The Launch, The Craze, and The Exit
Partly AI launched right in the middle of the AI portrait craze in early 2023. It quickly gained attention on social media and attracted a wave of enthusiastic users. While I did make some sales, the excitement eventually faded as the market became saturated with similar apps.
Building and launching Partly AI was a fantastic learning experience and a fun project to work on. However, it wasn’t a sustainable business in the long run. In August 2025, I decided to sell the domain name partly.ai to a new owner, closing this chapter but taking with me valuable insights and memories.
Whether you’re an art lover, a photography enthusiast, or just curious about AI-driven creativity, Partly AI represents a unique blend of technology and personal expression—a magical bridge between your photos and the limitless possibilities of AI art.