| Last Updated | Changes |
| 8/30/2023 | First version published |
What is Civitai?
Civitai.com is a thriving hub of Generative AI resource sharing, offering a platform where users can not only discover, download, and share content, but also review and discuss a diverse range of resources related to Stable Diffusion, and other Generative AI technologies.
Like a digital library, the website encompasses a broad range of content types, spanning an extensive range of categories, accommodating the interests of a wide audience. Whether you’re a fan of anime characters, a celebrity enthusiast, DnD fantasy fan, a photography hobbyist, a fan of cartoons, and beyond – Civitai.com curates a collection of resources that caters to practically unlimited preferences.
As an alternative to Huggingface, Civitai.com is more than just a means of storing models; it’s a vibrant community contributing towards the evolution of Stable Diffusion, and Generative AI.
Why’s it called Civitai?
Contrary to popular belief Civitai has nothing to do with the Civet – an animal known for consuming and excreting valuable coffee beans. Civit comes from the Latin word ‘Civitas’, meaning community.
You can read more about our naming origins here.
The Civitai Terms of Service (ToS)
Whenever you’re uploading content, whether it’s a model, a review, or an image post, you must keep the Terms of Service in mind; https://civitai.com/content/tos. Please review the Content Removal Criteria, prior to sharing content to Civitai.
Some of the rules most commonly violated by Content Creators are;
- Celebrity NSFW – “Adult”, Not Safe For Work (NSFW) or lewd pictures of real-world people is not permitted.
- Photorealistic Depictions of Minors – Models intended for the photorealistic depiction of minors are not permitted. Additionally, any photorealistic image of a minor is not permitted.
- Other Minors – Non-Photorealistic images of minors are acceptable, providing they are not posed in a sexually suggestive or inappropriate way.
Inappropriate content is reviewed and removed at the moderator’s discretion.
If you believe your content has been removed unfairly, you can submit an appeal through ourAppeal Formfor further review by a team separate from the moderation team.
How is Content Moderated?
Every uploaded image undergoes AI content and moderation tagging (utilizing Amazon Rekognition) to automatically flag potentially inappropriate content. If a model is marked as representing a minor and the image contains either inappropriate content or is photorealistic, it’s reviewed by a human moderator before being allowed onto the site. Our AI detection isn’t perfect, so if you spot something, please report it.
Minor content undergoes additional checks which can be read about in our Content Rules: Minors policy.
Similarly, images of real-world people, whether a celebrity or a regular person, must adhere to the Content Rules: Real People policy.
Reporting Site Content
All uploaded content can be manually flagged for review, including user accounts, models, model sample images, reviews, review images, and comments. We encourage the Community to help the moderation team police the site, by reporting resources which violate the Terms of Service.
There are many ways to report content, specific to each content type. Details are included in the relevant sections, below.
The website, accessible via Civitai.com or Civit.ai, is designed to be intuitive and easy to navigate, but there are many site sections, and numerous features which may not be immediately apparent to first-time visitors!
This guide will explain everything necessary to get the most out of Civitai, from posting images, reviews, and engaging with creators to uploading your own resources, and attaining a coveted Leaderboard badge!
Site Status
Sometimes the site goes through short periods of disruption due to the huge volumes of traffic it receives at certain times of day, or occasionally due to planned (or unplanned) maintenance. If the site isn’t functioning properly for you, check out the Status page for the latest information – https://status.civitai.com/status/public
If you’re in the Discord Server you can check out the Announcements channel for updates on outages and issues.
Bug Reporting & Feature Requests
Civitai.com is in a constant development cycle. New features and bug fixes are released multiple times per week, and you may encounter features which don’t operate as you’d expect! You can report bugs to us here and send us your Feedback and suggestions here.
Creating an Account
The site can be browsed, and safe-for-work content displayed and downloaded, without an account.
If you want access to mature content (18+ only content) and other site features, you must create an account, and specifically opt-in to adult content.
Creating an account is as simple as clicking the Sign In button at the top right of every page.
You can sign into Civitai with a Discord, Github, Google, or Reddit account, or an email address.
Follow the steps to create your account – it’s really simple, but if you run into problems you can email [emailprotected] for help!
Account Settings
We’ll first look at Account Settings. The account settings page let’s us configure our profile picture, select any badges which we have unlocked, and if we’ve attained a Leaderboard position in multiple categories we can choose which will be showcased on our profile.
Profile Settings
We can also control some settings related to our preferred image viewing format, and the preferred format for any model resources on the site. If Safetensor format is selected, for example, a model card with both a .ckpt and a .safetensors upload will present the .safetensors model for download first – if selected as the Model File Preference.
Browsing Settings
We also have access to certain Early Access Features – you may see more, or less, depending on your Civitai Subscriber status.
Some of the current Early Access Features include improved Search functionality, a greatly improved Home Page experience, and cleaner, more informative Model Cards. Any of the Early Access Features can be toggled on/off as desired.
Content Moderation Settings
One of the greatest things about Civitai is its diversity of content – there’s something for everyone. However, some people might not want to see certain categories of content, and we’ve designed the site to be extremely granular in the types of content that can be filtered out.
The Hidden Tags field allows resources with specific tags to be completely hidden from view, e.g. anime. Use the search box to find and exclude specific content tags from your site experience.
The Hidden Users field allows content from specific creators to be hidden. Use the search box to find and exclude specific users from your site experience.
Mature Content
By default, users will not see Explicit Adult Content, and Mature Content will be blurred. To opt-in to Mature and Explicit Adult Content, enable the switches, and toggle all content categories that you are comfortable seeing.
Note: Opting-in to Mature Content confirms you are over the age of 18.
Enabling Mature Content enables the granular content opt-in menu.
After enabling Mature and Explicit content, an “eye” icon will appear in the top right of the Site menu. This has four options;
- Safe – The site will not display any Mature or Explicit content.
- My Filters – The site will display content based on the content categories you chose to toggle on.
- Everything – The site will display all content categories, including all Mature and Explicit content.
- Blur Mature Content – A selector allowing all Mature and Explicit content to be made opaque/blurred out, with age-appropriateness indicators applied (which can be clicked, to unblur specific images).
Notification Settings
From Account Settings we can also control a plethora of Notification Settings.
Notifications appear in the top right of the Civitai page, and display a red dot highlighting new unread messages.
In rare instances you may receive personal messages/notifications from Site Administrators, alerting you to Content or Conduct violations, or just to say hi!
Newsletter Opt-In
Get model and creator highlights, AI news, as well as comprehensive guides from leaders in the AI Content Universe delivered to your inbox, with the Civitai newsletter!
If you’d like to receive the weekly Civitai newsletter you can opt-in by toggling it on;
Connected Accounts
If you wish to sign in with Discord, GitHub, Google, or Reddit, you can connect those accounts in the Connected Accounts section, allowing easy access to the site.
API Keys
If you’d like to interact with Civitai via the Application Programmer Interface (API), you can generate an API key from this page, allowing you to connect your own application or script to Civitai data.
Delete Account
Lastly, if you wish to leave Civitai and delete all your account data, you may do so from the bottom of this page. Beware, this is destructive and cannot be reversed! Make sure you’re sure before proceeding!
When you first visit the site you’ll see the page split into a number of blocks, or sections, starting with Announcements at the top (if there are any active Announcements);
Followed by the “Home Blocks” – modular sections containing specific, curated, content. Curated content is content chosen to be highlighted by our Community Curators, and is refreshed often. If you’d like to apply to be a Community Curator, you can do so here!
- Featured Models – A curated list of models. To view the complete model list click explore all models.
- Featured Images – A curated list of images. To view the complete model list click explore all Images.
- Top Creators – Creator Leaderboards for various categories of content.
- Featured Posts – A curated list of image posts.
- Featured Articles – A curated list of articles.
You may also encounter Contest blocks, containing details of currently running Contests/Competitions, and links to enter;
The Home Block system is modular, and configurable, from the “gear/cog” button on the top right;
Home Blocks can be added, and rearranged as desired.
When leaving the custom Home Block section empty the default layout will be displayed.
In future, new Home Block types for various categories of content and site functions will be added.
There are literally thousands of models (and other types of content) available for download, so to find what you want you’ll need to do some sorting and searching.
Filtering and Sorting
The main Content categories can be accessed from the Top Menu. These are “list” style pages, by default showing the Highest Rated content from the current Month.
Content ordering can be changed to highlight various resources based on common resource ranking methods.
Timescales can be changed to view those resources by a number of time periods.
Model resources can be filtered by a number of types and categories. This can be used in conjunction with the above ordering options.
Site Search
Civitai has a powerful Search function, allowing us to search for Models, Images (including Prompt content!), Articles, Collections and Users.
Additional filtering options can be accessed from the filter button to the left of the Search categories.
Search results can be “finetuned” by opening the Filters & Sorting menu, which will appear on the left-hand side of the site.
This menu allows filtering by a number of options, similar to the model filtering options on the main Model feed.
The Search can also be leveraged to search by Model Hash. Model hashes can be found in the Model Details pane.
A Model Hash is a unique identifier on Civitai – there can only be a single model with a particular hash; duplicate uploads are quickly identified and removed!
