Five Years of NovelAI: Announcing the NovelAI Anniversary Contest

Five years ago this month, NovelAI launched with a simple idea: that you should be able to write your stories without limits and with privacy in mind. We didn't know whether NovelAI would succeed or fail or if users would even like it. Fortunately, you did.

Half a decade later, NovelAI has grown into a storyteller in its own right. We've seen NovelAI Diffusion V4.5 push image generation into places we didn't expect, and this year welcomed Xialong into our text generation model family. None of that means anything without the people using it. For our fifth anniversary, we wanted to celebrate in the way we know best: by giving you a creative stage.

Brief Trip Down Memory Lane

It's been a long road from where we started as a small team shipping release after release. We've watched NovelAI grow into something none of us could have imagined. Before we get into what's coming next, we wanted to look back at some of the moments that shaped how we got here:

Here's to the next chapter of NovelAI!

The research team is always hard at work, keep an eye out for future announcements!

But for now, the stage is yours: Let the 5th Anniversary Contest begin!

To celebrate half a decade of limitless storytelling, we’re inviting you to take the creative stage in two distinct categories: Text Generation and Image Generation.

For the wordsmiths, the Text Generation track challenges you to write or co-write a five-line limerick or poem celebrating NovelAI’s fifth anniversary using our text models. Whether you write about your favorite creative adventures or feature our mascots such as Xialong, or even NAI-chan, your entry must be an authentic, 5 line, English, SFW screenshot taken and uploaded directly inside the NovelAI Screenshot Editor.

For the visionaries, the Image Generation track invites you to unleash your creativity using NovelAI's image models. We want you to drop our mascots, like NAI-chan or any of the text-gen model depictions, straight into a fun, joyful party environment! Get clever with your submission: maybe integrate the phrase "Happy 5th Anniversary NovelAI!" into the scene, iced onto a birthday cake, glowing on a cyberpunk neon sign, or written in a magical spellbook? Or skip the words entirely and let pure celebration imagery like confetti, fireworks, and characters blowing out five candles do the talking!

The Rewards

We are offering identical, massive prize pools for both the Text and Image categories to reward our amazing community.

The grand prize First Place winner will walk away with a full one-year Opus Subscription alongside a massive stash of 155,555 Anlas. Second Place will receive a six-month Opus Subscription and 95,555 Anlas, while Third Place takes home a three-month Opus Subscription and 75,555 Anlas. Finally, runners-up placing Fourth through Tenth will each be awarded a one-month Opus Subscription and 55,555 Anlas to keep their creative momentum going.

The NovelAI 5th Anniversary Contest is now open for submissions!

Check out the submission page here.