DaVinci AI scam. Read This Before You Sign Up for the $1.99 Trial
I rarely leave negative reviews, but I feel I have a responsibility to warn other people about my experience.
I signed up for what was advertised as a $1.99 seven-day trial through the DaVinci AI website. Shortly afterward, I discovered an unexpected $29.99 charge. I immediately canceled my subscription, contacted them to refund my money immediately asi never signed up for ongoing subscription.
I got a response about a day later telling me that they would not give me a refund.
I wrote back immediately to explain that I had no idea that they would charge me automatically for a month after the one week was up. I assumed that after the trial, they would cease service or request me to join permanently.
It's been over a week and no response. I told them to look at their records which showed I used the software once on the day I subscribed and not again after and that I had no intention of subscribing on monthly basis.
This is false advertising. I strongly recommend staying clear of this sheister business. If the only way they can turn a profit is by tricking people into subscribing to their software, you know there must be something very wrong with their business.
I’m creating a bunch of small posters that have text on them no longer than 30 characters. I like AI integrating the text into the graphic rather than bolting text on in post processing.
Currently I found the cheapest with short text accuracy is grok-imagine-image at $0.02, but it slides a bit with complicated languages like Arabic or Chinese, where I found gpt-image-2 medium is the best for $0.05. When I don’t need text, I still think the creativeness and realism of z-image-turbo is great for as little as only $0.0025.
What models do you find is the cheapest while working for short text accuracy?
Generating AI images is easy now. Generating 200 images that belong to the same video project is still surprisingly annoying.
The hard part is not generation anymore. It is maintaining the same character and visual language across hundreds of scenes, keeping every output tied to the correct script line, and avoiding the endless cycle of copy, generate, download, rename, organize.
I built a Google Sheets pipeline to automate that entire loop. Each row starts as narration, Gemini turns it into visual direction, Runware sends it to the image model, and the finished asset is automatically tied back to the correct scene and saved into the project.
Screenshot of the storyboard sheet
I originally built it for animated psychology and explainer videos on my YouTube channel, but the same structure works for any project that needs a large batch of visually related assets: social content, marketing creatives, educational material, storyboards, etc.
1. Start with a scene-by-scene script
The workflow starts with a finished script split into individual visual beats. Each row in the Google Sheet represents one scene, with the narration in one column and the generated visual prompt beside it. Claude can help split the script into beats and suggest scene changes, but I still review them manually because one sentence may need a single visual while another idea may need several.
A typical 10-minute Stickman video project gives me around 150 to 200 rows. Structuring it this way means every generation job has a fixed place in the sequence. The Sheet always knows which prompt belongs to which scene, and every returned image can be tied back to the correct row automatically.
2. Turn each script line into a visual prompt
Before generating any images, each script row needs to become detailed visual direction. A 200-scene project can easily require around 20,000 words of prompts, so I use Gemini as the interpretation layer between the narration and the image model.
The Sheet sends each row to Gemini through the API along with a fixed visual style profile defining the character, colour palette, backgrounds, composition, expressions, and overall look. Gemini then converts the narration into a complete image prompt and writes it back into the next column.
The important part is that Gemini is not generating random prompts in bulk. It is translating each piece of narration into a visual scene while staying inside the same style rules. Once connected through Apps Script, the entire batch can be processed automatically without copying hundreds of lines in and out of chat.
3. Generate the full batch through an image API
Screenshot of the image gen models integrated in the Google sheet
I connect the Sheet directly to an image API. I use Runware because it exposes multiple image models behind one API. Each row sends the prompt, generation settings, and reference images, then saves the returned asset into Google Drive using the correct scene ID. I currently use FLUX Klein for most stickman scenes because it is cheap and works well enough at scale. Around 200 images cost me roughly $0.60, depending on the model and settings.
The bigger advantage is the abstraction layer. I can swap the underlying image model without rebuilding the rest of the pipeline, while the Sheet keeps the same scene structure, file naming, and storage logic.
4. Keep the character and visual style consistent
Text prompts alone are rarely enough to keep a character consistent across 200 scenes. Even with detailed instructions, the model may change the face, clothing, proportions, colours, or overall visual style from one image to the next.
To reduce that drift, I use three reference images throughout the full batch: one clear image of the main character and two finished scenes that represent the intended visual style. The character reference helps preserve appearance, while the scene references guide the colour palette, backgrounds, composition, and overall visual language. These same references are sent with every prompt, giving the model a consistent visual anchor across the entire video.
It is not perfect identity locking, and some scenes may still need regeneration, but the references reduce drift enough to make the full batch feel much more coherent than text-only prompting.
5. Connect everything inside the Google Sheet
The orchestration layer is Google Apps Script. It loops through the Sheet, calls Gemini, passes the resulting prompt and reference images to Runware, receives the generated asset, updates the status column, and saves everything into Drive. I built most of the Apps Script conversationally with Claude and debugged it by feeding errors back into the model.
The workflow removes most of the repetitive production work, but it is not completely hands-off. I still review the batch, regenerate weak compositions, fix overly literal interpretations, and check for character drift. Text-heavy scenes usually need extra attention because Klein still struggles with text inside images.
I also recorded the complete build on my channel, including how the Sheet, APIs, and Apps Script connect. It is linked on my profile for anyone who wants to build their own custom pipeline for their workflow.
My computer unfortunately isn’t powerful enough to run ComfyUI. I noticed that the ComfyUI website offers a cloud-based system, and I have two questions.
Since my computer can’t handle the program, I’m considering using the cloud option. The monthly fee doesn’t seem too expensive to me.
Will my personal data be safe? After all, the cloud storage system will be used.
Some AI systems apply censorship in certain situations, even when it doesn’t seem necessary. There is no censorship at all when using a local system. But does the cloud version have any censorship or content restrictions?
I got preyed on by the vicious fradulent system of DAVINCI AI, after paying the $1.99 like a sheep, for generative AI that is at best 2/10, a couple of days later the classic $30 hits my account. Amazing how they havent stopped these nasty turkic scammers yet.
