Leonardo AI (stylized Leonardo.Ai) is an Artificial intelligence image generation platform founded in Sydney, Australia in 2022. It began as a tool for generating video game assets and grew into a general-purpose creative platform combining its own foundation models with fine-tuned community models and production workflows. In July 2024 the company was acquired by design platform Canva, and its technology now also powers image features inside Canva's products.
Platform and models
Unlike single-model products, Leonardo operates as a model hub with opinionated tooling:
- Phoenix, its flagship in-house foundation model line, tuned for prompt adherence and legible text.
- Fine-tuned model gallery: community and first-party checkpoints specialized for styles such as anime, isometric game art, product photography and architecture, a workflow inherited from the Stable Diffusion ecosystem.
- Production tools: canvas editing, upscaling, background removal, motion (image-to-video), and an API for studios.
Usage
Leonardo built its early user base among indie game developers generating sprites, textures and concept art, and retains that identity even as its use broadened into marketing and design imagery. On Wikiprompt, prompts tagged to Leonardo skew toward stylized illustration and game-adjacent art rather than the photorealistic editorial work that dominates GPT Image 2 and Nano Banana Pro usage.