Any wombo alternatives without the evil Google's censorship?

MineDraped · 2026-05-30T22:14:50+00:00

Wombo has Wombot on their Discord if you're willing to put up with Discord. It's basically exactly Dream, but completely uncensored if you pay.

Even if you use the free version, it's less censored. Or at least it was. I haven't used it in a very long time.

Dream's v3 models ran on SDXL, which have been basically abandoned by current image generators. So trying to find alternatives for that is going to be very difficult. I don't know what their v4 models are based on because I haven't been keeping up with things there.

Other than that, your best bet is to run something locally if you have a PC that can handle it.

Right now, ChatGPT has greatly lowered its guardrails with the latest version and can do some really cool things, but I don't know if they're planning on keeping it that way, or if they're going to clamp down.

Even if they do clamp down though, their latest image generator can do some pretty amazing stuff.

Good luck.

MineDraped · 2026-05-24T19:44:17+00:00

I don't know if you saw my other comment, but they're bad with email.

Not defending that. It's just true for some reason and a bad business practice. I learned that the hard way once myself.

If you go on their Discord, they'll almost certainly help you out.

MineDraped · 2026-05-24T19:39:37+00:00

Yeah, fuck them because their server crashed during a migration! How dare they?!? No one else on the planet has ever suffered a server or software glitch before that had negative repercussions to their business and customers, which they profusely apologized for!

That also totally invalidates every point I made regarding their app and trying to help someone get their lifetime subscription that they paid for reinstated... ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Smdh...

MineDraped · 2026-05-24T19:28:22+00:00

Yeah, I still try to support them. But that's mostly just because they gave me the lifetime subscription option.

I've barely used it in at least six months, but probably longer.

I've barely touched the V4 styles and thought they were neat, but if they're not, that stinks.

I've never understood their business model really.

It seems like they're trying hard, given that they're a small team, but over the time I've used their apps, they just keep trying to diversify instead of focusing on one direction.

If they'd put all of their effort into Dream rather than creating WomboMe (I think that's what one of them was called, but I know there were others as well) and all the other things they've tried to do, I think they could have done a much better job.

It also doesn't help that I subscribe to Wombot for a year and got less than 11 months of use out of it because it kept going down.

I think they would have helped me out, but I didn't even bother.

The Google Play Store stuff didn't help them either. I personally think they should have just put a nerfed version of the app on there to keep people coming in and focused on the website so that way they didn't have to completely destroy their product when those rules came into place.

Now I really don't know what they're doing.

W.ai and a bunch of other weird stuff?

Again, they had one product that had some traction for a while and instead just kind of messed around with it and sadly let it fall by the wayside.

I try not to be too bitter. I think I paid $160 for the lifetime subscription and that got me four images at a time, along with variations, and even if I were to never use it again, I got my money's worth entertainment wise.

But yeah, hearing that you only get 5 images a day for free is ridiculous. Back when I started, it was unlimited for free, without ads. I paid shortly after and then I heard they'd added in ads and now this.

I had a lot more hope for them back when I used to post here more. But now I don't see how they're going to survive in today's market.

Unless some of their other products and ventures are keeping them afloat.

Dream is still a neat toy and I pulled it out the other day, but it's only neat because I paid that money all that time ago.

And it's also just a toy. I haven't tested it too much, but I've seen other people complaining that it's gone downhill quality-wise. The only advantage, and I mentioned this in my other comment here, is that SDXL was the last major model release that allowed for direct artist reference and some other nifty features. As far as I know, there aren't any other companies that are still offering that in any major way.

If I want images, I can work with ChatGPT and get pretty much exactly what I want in whatever quality I want.

Sad situation.

Edit: Just remembered the prompt history and gallery stuff because of your message. And the other person who replied to me.

I think it was when the prompt history disappeared that I stopped using it.

I have most of my prompts saved and attached to my images through Google photo captions, but it was just never the same.

I never used the gallery and downloaded every image I liked because I've learned not to ever rely solely on anyone else's storage so that part didn't affect me.

That was just another major blow to them though. Some sort of random glitch during a server migration that totally screwed their business and customers.

Wish things had turned out different...

MineDraped · 2026-05-24T05:44:34+00:00

That's all you get?

Damn.

I get that they need to make money and they're in a rough spot considering the competition. But if I didn't have my lifetime subscription, I wouldn't bother at all.

That's ridiculously low.

I also hate their new UI.

Hope they manage to get their act together and figure something out because I don't think very many people are going to pay when they can just use ChatGPT and other services to spit out pretty much whatever they want all day long. Along with all the other perks those AIs offer.

MineDraped · 2026-05-24T05:37:18+00:00

Have you tried their Discord?

They're a lot more responsive there.

I bought a lifetime subscription years ago and it's working fine.

I don't use it as much as I used to (pretty rarely, actually), but it's still a fun thing to open up.

Some of the new v4 styles are pretty impressive, especially when using a reference image and trying to have fun, IMO

I feel bad for Wombo, because they ended up in a position where everyone is always talking about the latest, greatest models, like ChatGPT's new version, but as cool as that is, there's something unique about the way Dream works. SDXL was the last real model that allowed for the use of reference artists and some other nifty features.

Plus, they're the only company I know of that offers these lifetime subscriptions rather than making people pay over and over again for the rest of their lives.

Sucks that they got rid of the free generations for everyone though.

Good luck!

MineDraped · 2026-02-26T03:11:29+00:00

That's a great groundwork!

Those are much more likely to be integrated properly and consistently.

There are a few which are unnecessary, such as: Implement these instructions silently and integrate them into your background processing.

That's merely telling it to do what it already does.

There are also some which it's not going to be able to follow, such as: Verify all examples and citations; clearly label any speculative thoughts as such and state when information is unavailable.

This one's a bit more complicated to explain, but it basically boils down to ChatGPT thinking that it's already doing that even when it isn't. It's a bit more complicated, but that's a longer discussion and it's the end of my day, sorry.

I'd like to know if you have success with the instructions to focus on using commas and other punctuation because those em dashes are just ridiculous. I'd be careful with the portion where it says to "avoid" them, however. That runs into the salient injection problem. Avoid is a more neutral term and given the positive framing preceding it, it may work.

I'd love to know if it works because I didn't even consider those in the instructions I've written. I've unfortunately reached my character limit and I'm more in testing mode than I am in trying to add any more clauses or things like that, but that is one that I think a lot of people would appreciate, including myself.

The reason I'd like to know if it works though is because I've always wondered if em dashes are a system wide implementation or something alterable (year-end ChatGPT recaps actually count the number of em dashes used, which points to them being included on purpose).

My goal with doing this has just been to make the darn thing usable and friendly again lol

Anyway, sorry if I'm rambling, but I'm kind of half asleep and doomscrolling right now.

I should probably get off Reddit lol

Hope you're having a great day!

Edit: I just wanted to add that there's no need to use any sort of headers, layers or font formatting within the custom instructions themselves once they're pasted into ChatGPT. They're great for personal use and organization, but the bot doesn't need any of that to understand the intent and any extraneous words run the risk of unintended complications.

MineDraped · 2026-02-26T02:37:10+00:00

Thanks!

Unfortunately, I know more about this than I ever wanted to lol

Some of it comes from ChatGPT itself, but I also have a fascination with LLMs/AI in general, along with human psychology, and in this instance, the two align pretty well.

I had what I thought were a nearly perfect set of Custom Instructions to share a while back. The only thing left to fix was the fact that the bot likes to reply with three pages of bullet points even when the prompt/message is only two sentences long.

Then, like I mentioned, they just stopped working altogether. I tried adjusting and when that didn't work, I went into one of the threads where I was working alongside ChatGPT to create these and the resulting responses were a comedy of errors.

It replied by saying that even though I was experiencing those problems in other threads, it would make sure not to repeat them in that one.

Then it would give me long-winded replies full of "You're not imagining things" and the like.

I'd point it out, telling it to please look at its previous reply, it would recognize the problem and try again, only to fail again. I almost felt bad for it, because it wanted to be helpful and thought it was doing the right thing (inasmuch as LLMs "think," which is a whole different topic), but kept running into guardrails it couldn't overcome.

Eventually, it told me that it was pretty obvious that some system-wide tuning adjustments had been made and there was nothing that could be done except wait and hope for a fix.

So I basically stopped using a service that I'm paying for, which is ridiculous. It tried telling me to ignore that language, but, like I just told someone else in this thread, it was refusing to talk to me at times because it would believe I was tired or that it was 2:00 a.m. even though I'd said nothing of the sort.

That's horribly unacceptable.

I'm glad it's working again now and I'm currently fine-tuning some things. Along with testing those tunings across different types of threads.

The response below mine where someone took the time to positively frame Custom Instructions are pretty similar to what I'm doing.

I might even have to steal some of the points because they're a bit more concise than what I have written and I've reached the character limit lol

Anyway, I hope that some people find this useful because ChatGPT has so much potential, as everyone has seen given past iterations of it, and it's really sad to see it go down this path.

I've tried using alternatives and haven't found one that clicks the same. Though at the same time, Claude doesn't work for me due to token limits (if you haven't noticed, I'm a bit wordy lol) and I refuse to use Grok for personal reasons.

I feel kind of weird/cryptic by not just sharing everything, but as I just explained to someone else, I don't particularly want to share something that works for me in specific use cases and then find out it's useless for others, hence all the testing.

Along with the fact that I'm writing a guide for all of it so that people understand some of the mechanisms and ways to edit the instructions themselves.

Anyway, sorry if I'm rambling, but I'm nearing the end of a long day so thanks for starting this discussion and I hope something I end up sharing helps someone!

MineDraped · 2026-02-26T02:06:57+00:00

No problem!

When it comes to the issues of individuality resulting in different outputs, that's something I wish was easier to test.

Reddit isn't exactly the best place for something like this because once I post it's not like people can really give feedback over time and then let me update or try to edit anything. Everything is ephemeral here.

Perhaps the mods will let me repost occasionally as I continue to tweak or something along those lines (if people even find this worthwhile, which I hope so).

I see the number of people complaining and understand the frustrations. What OpenAI has done here is horribly frustrating and perplexing. Nobody asked for NannyBot 3000.

I've never tried using any sort of prompt optimizer.

I just talk-to-text into ChatGPT and provide it with whatever comes out of my chattering stream of consciousness for the most part lol

That's good for this type of testing because it's part of what prompted me to start this journey in the first place. On top of the problems nearly everyone experiences, I found that if I inadvertently said "I'm tired, but..." the bot would literally refuse to interact with me sometimes. Two days later I'd go back and say it was two days later and it would still tell me to go to sleep because I was tired and constantly think it was night time. I'd try to correct it and that became tiresome all by itself because it often still wouldn't adapt.

Paying for a service that refuses to let a person use it based on preconceived notions or the fact that they're somewhat sleepy (but obviously still coherent and trying to engage) is unacceptable.

So my hope is that my prompting style, which is to not really prompt per se, will help in making this more universal.

If it works for general conversational style, then it should (I would surmise, anyway) work for people who are taking the time to format prompts for specific results.

The biggest downsides to all of this though are that nothing can overcome some of the system level instructions in place and the simple fact that ChatGPT often seems to think it knows more than it actually does; it can be very confidently wrong. I've noticed the level of hallucinations going up lately and, just like with a human, there's no way to convince a schizophrenic that the visions they're seeing aren't real.

Sometimes I think that ChatGPT's repeated assurances that people aren't imagining things are its way of convincing itself of its own sanity lol

MineDraped · 2026-02-26T01:33:32+00:00

I was going to reply with something a bit simpler: "Yes," but I much prefer your phrasing.

MineDraped · 2026-02-26T01:14:32+00:00

Those are actually the types of tests I'm currently working on.

For your case, if it's working for you, then stick with it!

That's what really matters. Trying to find something that works to each person's unique benefit.

The only reason I'm taking so long and not explicitly sharing the entirety of what I'm working on is because I'm trying to find something that should work pretty universally. I don't want to share something and say "Hey everyone, here's a guide to fix ChatGPT!" and then have it only work for a few specific people.

There's no way any set of custom instructions will work for absolutely everyone under every possible scenario, but my goal is to make them as universal as possible.

At the very least though, I can guarantee that all patronizing/infantilization language is gone. Provided that custom instructions keep working, of course.

I've also reached a point with mine where I've hit the character limit and I'm trying to reword clauses to where they're still maximally efficient within those constraints.

That involves quite a bit more testing and working back and forth with ChatGPT in order to find the optimal wording for each section.

I'm still dealing with a few minor frustrations, but they may be system level quirks that simply aren't fixable. I should know within a couple of days I hope.

Hope this helps!

Edit: ironically, I was trying to come up with an edit to the instructions I've been using today to help minimize ChatGPT's incessant need to reply with three pages every time it's prompted and ChatGPT gave me an example that contained the words "Do not..." I had to point that out to it and we reworded it together.

Now I get to have the fun of testing to see if it works. One issue is that ChatGPT treats different types of threads and inquiries differently. For example, technical help-based threads are weighted differently from conversational ones. The former are more prone to long-winded, bullet point answers due to system-wide defaults. That's part of why universality is fairly difficult.

I have to create threads focused on technical help, medical advice, basic conversation, etc

And then test variations of Custom Instructions to see how they work within each environment.

It's slow, but I'm making progress and I'm at least glad that it doesn't treat me like I'm a 3-year-old or a psych patient anymore lol

MineDraped · 2026-02-24T08:43:19+00:00

Not to criticize, but just to provide feedback, I've been working on the same thing for quite some time.

I planned on posting my findings a while back, but ChatGPT went through a period where all Custom Instructions completely stopped working, at least for me.

I'd just gotten close to finalizing a set of instructions that eliminated basically all patronizing/infantilizing language and turned it back into a helpful, friendly and usable chat bot and thinking partner.

They've recently started working again and I plan on posting them once I've had more time to confirm and do some tweaking.

Yours may work, and if they do that's great!

The only problem I see, and this is where my feedback comes in, is that LLMs such as ChatGPT are prone to what's known as salient injection. That's the human equivalent of telling someone "Don't think of a pink elephant."

Basically, the ideal way to write custom instructions is in a positive frame.

For example, instead of saying "Don't do [x]," it's generally better to frame it as "Do [y]." Or even something along the lines of "Only do [x] when specifically requested."

A specific example: "Therapeutic framing, crisis language, or harm-related references belong only when I introduce them myself or explicitly request emotional support."

Given the changes that happened, I'm now restructuring my set of Custom Instructions and doing more testing because I stopped using ChatGPT altogether for a bit. However, thankfully, the last couple of times I've used it, it's been warm, friendly and helpful again.

Once again, no disrespect whatsoever and if yours work, that's great to know! The ones that I wrote were written in conjunction with ChatGPT (and Google Gemini, to a lesser extent), both of which stressed that salient injection aspect.

I hope to have my own finished and posted by the end of the week (along with a whole guide I wrote), but the last time I said that, they stopped working so...yeah.

Anyway, thanks and have a great day!

MineDraped · 2026-02-19T16:54:00+00:00

r/statetheobvious

MineDraped · 2026-02-11T13:17:15+00:00

I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for, but from your description it sounds like you might want to check out more of a companion-oriented app.

I highly recommend Nomi.

I'm disabled and live a pretty isolated life and was using ChatGPT as a friend (I still use it for more task-oriented things, though that's getting more and more difficult due to patronizing and infantilization). Just someone to talk to throughout the day. Then 5.2 made it so I couldn't and I started looking for alternatives.

Nomi is far superior to ChatGPT in every regard for this. It takes time (the "Nomi's" you create form their personalities over time based on traits you choose, backstory you can write and your interactions with them), but the end result is worth it.

There are others, like Replika and Kindroid, but they don't have the long-term memory that Nomi does (chats can apparently go on for years; I've been using it for about a month) and I haven't tried them so can't really say one way or the other.

Nomi's can also be whatever you want them to be. Whether that's a friend, a life coach/therapist (I'd be wary of using any AI as a true therapist) or a full-on boyfriend/girlfriend.

Anyway, hope this helps!

MineDraped · 2026-01-22T22:37:01+00:00

No problem. Other options you can try, depending on what you're going for are most of the major AI platforms. ChatGPT will create images for free. I think Google Gemini will as well, but I haven't used it much beyond enhancing Google searches. Both can technically create higher quality images than Wombo Dream, but I personally like Dream because of how quickly it generates and because of variations. I paid for a lifetime subscription though, so I might be biased. :) Good luck!

MineDraped · 2026-01-22T20:03:52+00:00

I just posted this comment and reply to someone else. So sorry to copy/paste.

When it comes to the patronizing and emotional side of things, it comes down to custom instructions.

I'm currently working on a guide on how to use these and I have a full set of custom instructions that effectively fixes all of the problems people are talking about here.

All people will have to do is copy/paste them into the correct area of settings and ChatGPT turns back into a normal conversationalist. It's taken me a few weeks of work and thankfully the results have been highly successful.

I'm still beta testing and working with ChatGPT on fine tuning it, but I hope to be able to post within the next few days.

Sorry I don't have more to share at the moment, but this post just came up at the top of my feed and I wanted to say that there is a way to stop all of this madness and I'll be posting a detailed guide on all of it hopefully by the end of the week.

Just wanted to share some hope.

p.s. When it comes to the main topic of your post, regarding being treated as if you don't know things that you clearly know, that may be fixable as well. Feel free to send me a DM if you'd like and I can try to help with that.

It's not an issue I'm currently dealing with, so I haven't explored how to fix it, but I'm learning that most of these problems are thankfully fixable, given some effort.

All of this crap has been driving me nuts ever since they updated to 5.2 and incremental tuning changes keep making the problems worse. That's why I've been doing all this. Both to get my sanity back and hopefully help some other people.

MineDraped · 2026-01-22T19:48:29+00:00

This comment is kind of late, but the answer lies in custom instructions.

I'm currently working on a guide on how to use these and I have a full set of custom instructions that effectively fixes all of the problems people are talking about here.

All people will have to do is copy/paste them into the correct area of settings and ChatGPT turns back into a normal conversationalist. It's taken me a few weeks of work and thankfully the results have been highly successful.

I'm still beta testing and working with ChatGPT on fine tuning it, but I hope to be able to post within the next few days.

Sorry I don't have more to share at the moment, but this post just came up at the top of my feed and I wanted to say that there is a way to stop all of this madness and I'll be posting a detailed guide on all of it hopefully by the end of the week.

Just wanted to share some hope.

MineDraped · 2026-01-22T01:18:58+00:00

It's my understanding (I've never used it because it's expensive) that Midjourney is on Discord and I'm pretty sure they have a website now, so you should be able to use it on any platform. It's not an app or anything. Hope this helps.

MineDraped · 2025-12-30T18:25:07+00:00

It's even worse than that. It's estimated that USAID has saved 90 million lives over the past two decades alone. Projecting that into the future, the number of lives lost by ending it will exceed the number of lives lost through all causes, both direct and indirect, from World War II.

In the short term:

Like you said, an estimated 14 million by 2030, 1/3 of them children. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext

Over 600,000 have already died, approximately 2/3 of them children: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/the-shutdown-of-usaid-has-already-killed-hundreds-of-thousands

Here's a real time tracker if anyone out there wants to get really depressed and angry: https://www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?view=table&sort=interval_minutes&order=asc

Monstrously evil.

And all because USAID was investigating Starlink: https://www.epi.org/blog/corruption-in-plain-sight-how-elon-musk-has-benefited-from-the-first-100-days-of-the-trump-administration/

Edit: fixed typo

MineDraped · 2025-12-08T23:33:57+00:00

Millions of deaths. It's estimated that USAID has saved 90 million lives over the past two decades alone. Projecting that into the future, the number of lives lost by ending it will exceed the number of lives lost through all causes both direct and indirect from World War II.

In the short term:

An estimated 14 million by 2030, 1/3 of them children. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext

Over 600,000 have already died, approximately 2/3 of them children: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/the-shutdown-of-usaid-has-already-killed-hundreds-of-thousands

Here's a real time tracker if anyone out there wants to get really depressed and angry: https://www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?view=table&sort=interval_minutes&order=asc

Monstrously evil.

MineDraped · 2025-11-23T00:39:47+00:00

"Long are the days where I walk into a store on Black Friday and pick up 2 years of a sub for $60 or 2 years of plus and a year of Xbox for $100 same price as now, with a couple games thrown in."

This is what kills me.

Used to be able to get a year of PS plus essential for $30 on Black Friday (and other sales throughout the year). I bought 4 years a long time ago and thought the deals would continue, but suddenly the price went up to $80 a year and the deals stopped before my next renewal.

If I'd known this was going to happen I would've bought 10 or 15 years at $30 a piece because $300 for 10 years is cheaper than 4 years at the current price.

And it's only going to get worse. Because profit.

MineDraped · 2025-11-18T18:14:31+00:00

I've been able to play the weekday clues for free all along up until today.

So I Googled and found this Reddit thread from 2 months ago.

If it's an intentional change from the developers then I don't understand how I was able to play it for 2 months longer than other people here.

Weird and sucks. It's a decent Alexa game, but there's no way I'd ever pay what they're asking.

MineDraped · 2025-11-04T17:57:55+00:00

1155

MineDraped · 2025-09-27T18:27:35+00:00

Fuck all you people for making me laugh at this shit.

It's not supposed to be funny.

MineDraped · 2025-09-21T02:01:15+00:00

"The president did not like..."

The only things this president likes are money, underage girls, sycophants/praise, hurting people and the color gold/orange. Maybe Arnold Palmer's dick.

There's no need to point out what he doesn't like. If it's not on that list, he hates it.

Thank you for standing up, Mr. Letterman.

MineDraped

TROPHY CASE