SeedEdit: Streamlining Image Editing with Doubao
- Real image edits with text like “make her older” or “add a chair”
- Fast response time around 15 seconds
- Built by the ByteDance, team behind Seedream and SeedVLM
- Keeps identity and fine details consistent
- Works in English and Chinese
The AI world keeps moving fast, with innovations popping up across different areas, including of course image editing.
SeedEdit 3.0 is a next-gen image editing tool that responds to plain text prompts. Type something like “make the man look older” or “add glasses” and it updates the real image while keeping the face and background details. It runs live in ByteDance apps and usually takes just 10-15 seconds to edit.
It comes from ByteDance’s Seed team. Same folks behind Seedream 3.0 and SeedVLM. These tools all focus on AI image stuff. ByteDance also owns TikTok so yeah they’ve got experience pushing creative tools fast.
SeedEdit's Method
The model is built on causal diffusion tied to a VLM. It uses tag data to figure out what kind of edit you want. It also learns from both real human edits and smart fake ones. Plus it tags and captions the edits itself so the model understands better what the user meant.
In June 2025, ByteDance - as per their post - has rolled out the new version - SeedEdit 3.0 and it’s supposed to be a solid step up from the last one. This model's tuned to handle edits in real-world pics without losing fine image details. Basically you tell it what to change and it does a better job sticking to that plan.
Here’s what they changed. They added a new way to handle training images. It pulls from a bunch of sources and mixes in extra info to help the model understand edits more like a human would. Then they trained it using both a diffusion loss and something called a reward model that checks if edits match what was asked.
SeedEdit Results
SeedEdit can handle various editing tasks, including:
- Relighting & Style Changes: Adjust lighting or turn a photo into a Pixar-style animation.
- Advanced Object Manipulation: Add, remove, or tweak objects with precision, like making a house float or putting boots on a sheep.
They say ithe new model outperforms SeedEdit 1.6, GPT-4o and Gemini 2.0 when they run it through their own benchmark. They tested everything from small touchups to full-on transformations. And it came out on top with cleaner results that still followed instructions well.
ByteDance’s SeedEdit is also competing with such prominent models as FLUX Kontext in the field of editing images through natural language prompts. Previously, the alternatives included Alibaba’s Ace and Omnigen, but it seems like they're not going to be winning horses in this race. But still nice to have free alternatives in this sphere available, such as OminiControl. There are more, just explore my dedicated AI tools directory further.
SeedEdit Demo
SeedEdit’s demo was available on Hugging Face in 2024: Link (is unfortunately malfunctioning, was working for a while).
Seems to be the case - as per ByteDance’s latest post - that you can try SeedEdit so far only through the Chinese platforms such as:
You'll need Google translate and a phone number. However, I was unsuccessful with my New Zealand based phone, upon receiving 3 messages with 6-digits codes and entering them within a mater of seconds the website claimed they were invalid. On jimeng website the sms doesn't even get sent claiming you haven't entered the hone number when you have. Seems like it might only be working for Chinese nationals who are reading bar codes with their apps for now.
No word on a public API or open-source code drop just yet. And there's no separate app either. Guess we wait and see what comes next. It is likely coming to Dreamina next.
What are people saying?
Users from this Reddit discussion seem split on what this tool really means for creators.
Some call out ByteDance for keeping it closed source. One post even compared it to worries around Seed-Music. They want more transparency.
Others mentioned how the tool is free on HuggingFace but not easy to use. One user said “the queues are brutal...you wait forever for one edit.”
And then there’s the bigger question. Do we even need more AI-generated content? One user asked “Why keep making stuff no one sees?” But another shot back “There’s still value in custom content...especially for small creators.”
The back and forth continues about what’s real. Does AI make media fake? Or just more flexible?
Some folks also pointed out who really gains from all this. “It’s not for us...it’s for the companies keeping us scrolling,” wrote one commenter. Can’t say they’re wrong.
Last modified 25 June 2025 at 09:15
Published: Nov 25, 2024 at 12:20 PM
