Review of Hotpot: AI Tool for Image Generation and Enhancement & Its Use in Affiliate Marketing

Most of us have probably already played around with AI, generating pictures or asking it to write a text. Many are actively using it in their daily work. Let’s take a look at whether the Hotpot AI tool — a simple platform for generating images and text, colorizing, and restoring photos — can be useful for generating ad creatives in affiliate marketing. We’ll explore its main features and also test how well it colorizes and retouches images.

How the Hotpot AI Tool Works

Like other graphic AI tool, Hotpot AI uses deep machine learning techniques trained on massive datasets. Its core engine is based on various versions of Stable Diffusion, but Hotpot AI also offers, with a 10% markup, other models like Google Imagen, OpenAI DALL·E 3, and Hotpot Art Maker.

It can generate fairly good images from text which we’ll demonstrate below. For simple tasks in affiliate marketing, this is more than enough. Even professional designers looking for creative inspiration can use it, provided the pricing plans work for them.

Getting Started

You must create an account with Hotpot AI if you intend to use paid features. Free image generation and editing can be done without logging in. The number of free actions appears to be limited but not strictly enforced — in our case, we were able to generate small images for a whole week.

To register, you’ll need to provide an email address and password.

Your email must match the one linked to your Apple or Google Pay account if you’re using the paid version of the app. Most issues are resolved via direct communication with support, also by email.

Next, in the menu, you’ll see the Hotpot AI products. There are five in total:

• AI Image — for image generation
• AI Headshot — for studio portraits and avatars
• AI Editing — for image editing
• AI Game — for game development
• AI Writing — for text creation

We’ll take a closer look at each of these below.

Pricing

Hotpot AI does not provide transparent information on pricing. A single generation or edit may cost anywhere from 3–5 credits, and sometimes even 25–30 credits, depending on the task. You can only see the credit cost after configuring all the parameters and clicking the “Go” button.

Images and texts for commercial use are always paid. They are of good quality, and you can select both the size and the number of generations per session.

Credits/month	Price
1,000	$10
2,500	$25
5,000 (popular plan)	$50
10,000	$100
20,000	$200

Avatar Pricing

Avatars are a separate expense and are generated in bundles, not individually.

Number of Images	Price
40	$10
80	$14
160	$20
800	$80

Non-commercial images and icons are free, but limited to square dimensions (512×512 pixels) and only one generation per prompt. These are often sufficient for social media, web pages, or banners. Files are downloadable only in PNG format.

When posting these images online, you must include a link to the specific Hotpot AI product. If a clickable link is not possible, you are asked to mention Hotpot.ai prominently.

Hotpot AI Functions

The core features of Hotpot AI include:

• Generation — Create images from prompts or user files, icons, and text-based visuals for specific purposes.
• Colorization — Automatically adds color to black-and-white photographs.
• Restoration — Restores old or damaged photos, removing flaws and improving clarity.
• Editing — Background removal, object erasure, face enhancement, upscaling (up to 10 times).

Image Generator

Image generation is handled by the AI Image tool. It allows you to create images using two editors — a free one and a more powerful paid editor (3 credits per generation at 1024×1024 resolution). There are also generators for:

• Characters
• Backgrounds
• Logos
• Icons
• Anime-style images

Let’s generate an image using the following prompt:

Sunset. The medieval castle stands on top of a hill, surrounded by green forests and fields. Light falls on the battlements and fortress walls. In the foreground are meadows with tall grass and tall trees. There are clouds in the sky through which the sun breaks through.

Now let’s experiment with AI Stock Photos.
We enter a short prompt:

Summer, evening, town by the sea. Girl with red hair stands in the middle of the street.

We then take the third photo from the right — a picture of the girl — and upload it into the AI Character Generator as a reference image, selecting three styles inspired by computer games.

Now we split the previous prompt into two parts.

The first part will be useful for generating a background design using AI Backgrounds:

Summer, evening, town by the sea.

We select the darkest style available.

Now we take the second part of the prompt and insert it into AI Anime:

Girl with red hair stands in the middle of the street.

Helpful tip: Write detailed prompts, but keep in mind that text recognition is limited to 400 characters.

Image Editing

The AI Editing module handles image editing. Most of its functions are paid. You can:

• Colorize black-and-white photos
• Retouch and restore images
• Remove backgrounds or unwanted elements
• Enhance blurry portraits

Let’s see how it works.

Overall, the result is clear — the AI tool handled the task well. The quality may be even better in the paid version.

The paid editor AI Art Personalizer can transform a photo by applying the style of an uploaded reference image.

The result looks like this.

AI Photo Upscaler is also a paid editor that allows raster images to be enlarged up to 10 times.

Downloads are available in PNG and JPG formats, and you can set the DPI from 50 to 1200, which is useful if the image is intended for printing.

The tool works with black-and-white photos as well — we’ll see how later.

By the way, another similar service which is older and more pictures-oriented is Recraft.ai which we also have covered.

Creating Portraits and Avatars

The next product from Hotpot AI is called AI Headshot. It allows you to create avatars, selfies, and professional portrait photos. All editors in this section are paid, and images are sold in packages of 20–40.

You can generate portraits such as:

• General headshots
• Corporate photos
• Chinese Lunar New Year portraits
• Avatars in different styles
• Cosplay photos
• Real estate background portraits
• Medical-themed headshots
• Christmas-themed portraits

“General” avatars

Business photos with real estate backgrounds

“Medical” photos

“Christmas” photos

Only the background of an existing avatar can be changed for free.

Helpful tip: Upload high-resolution images to ensure the final quality is good and not pixelated.

Two other modules — AI Game and AI Writing — are paid or available via individual developer access. They allow you to create game content and professionally work with text, such as writing a song or book, or crafting a product description. Another interesting free feature is the Color Generator, which can even be used in professional design.

Table of Hotpot AI’s Main Features

Function	Description	Example Use Case
Colorization	Automatically detects and adds color to black-and-white photos or adjusts hues in color ones	Adding color to old or faded images
Restoration	Restores old or damaged photos	Improving image quality, removing scratches and noise
Image & Text Generation	Creates new visuals or text based on a prompt or template	Generating art pieces, poems, books, or product descriptions
Editing	Tools for image editing	Upscaling, enhancing portraits, removing objects, changing/removing backgrounds

After you’ve created an image that you eventually like, you can make them move with LeiaPix! Read our review to learn more about it.

Using Hotpot AI in Affiliate Marketing

Hotpot AI can be a practical tool for creating unique images quickly. Thanks to its automation features, the platform saves time and is accessible even to beginners who need ad creatives for affiliate marketing campaigns.

Affiliates can buy avatar packs in bulk — useful for personalized advertising in social media, where establishing trust with the audience is important. With proper prompts or templates, Hotpot AI adjusts well to different niches and target groups.

Using Hotpot AI, affiliates can:

• Generate promo materials for social media posts, stories, and ads;
• Generate icons and illustrations for landing pages;
• Upscale images without quality loss;
• Enhance facial details in portraits;
• Remove backgrounds or unwanted objects from images;
• Colorize or retouch old or damaged photos.

Example Prompt for a Gambling Promo Material

A beautiful girl in a golden dress stands against the background of the “wheel of fortune.”

Hotpot AI offers a helpful feature: generating creatives tailored for specific social media platforms — from Instagram to Facebook and TikTok. This is especially useful for hypothesis testing. An affiliate can quickly change the background, color scheme, or creative style to find the best-performing option.

It seems that Hotpot cannot create explicit images for Adult/Dating verticals creatives. In this case, you can always use generators of AI nude pictures.

How to Recolor Clothing in a Photo with Hotpot AI

Let’s return to the AI Editing module and see how well it handles photo colorization. This feature is especially useful in advertising when you need to change the color of clothing in an image.

The top image uses the maximum colorization factor (25). The bottom image uses the minimum setting (12).

We can’t say for sure if Einstein’s sweater was actually this color — unfortunately, the colorization process is automatic, and there’s no way to manually adjust or fine-tune the result.

Again, there’s no option to manually adjust specific areas or target a particular hue.

Conclusion: Hotpot AI is not suitable for recoloring clothes to a specific color. It only allows for automatic adjustment of overall color intensity.

How to Restore Photos Using Hotpot AI

The image restoration feature is designed to bring old, damaged, or low-quality photos back to life.
For this test, we used a famous portrait of Frida Kahlo downloaded from the web.

In the AI Editing module interface, select the Photo Restorer tool. Upload the image and mark that it contains scratches.

The initial result was not impressive — many imperfections remained. To improve it, we used the Object Remover tool to manually erase the more serious defects.

Conclusion

Hotpot AI is a simple tool for working with images and text, easy to use even without prompt writing skills or design experience. It can generate images from text, create avatars, colorize black-and-white photos, and restore damaged ones. Drawbacks include unclear pricing, high cost of avatar/image packages, and no manual control over colorization or retouching processes.

Whether to work with Hotpot AI or choose another tool to create images for affiliate marketing — that’s up to you.