The New Adobe?

But I feel compelled to talk about Higgsfield, since their marketing is amazing and inescapable, but they're also finding themselves on the cusp of a creator backlash, as it seems as though their terms and conditions have changed to allow them to use their subscribers work in their own marketing and training (As an aside - is it weird using technology made from stealing artwork and complaining when it steals yours? Feels weird to me.).

Anyway, Higgsfield are winning the hype battle, and is valued at over a billion, good for them - but is it good for you? Should you use them?

What I'd like to do here is take a beat to try and make a neat cut between what is genuinely useful (and therefore what you may be missing out on), and what is noise.

Signal vs Noise

1. You're Paying For Convenience. The base product in all aggregators (Higgsfield, Artilist, Envato) is the same. You get access to multiple commercial models, while paying one subscription price. It's a middle man business, and therefore will cost you more than going straight to the source. You're paying for convenience. None of them has any way to get under the hood of the commercial models (ie they can't make Seedance behave better or worse than their competitors. Only ByteDance, the makers of the tech can do that)
2. The Extras Are Nice-To-Haves. In order to stand out from each other, each aggregator needs to bolt on something to sweeten the deal. The unique extras are pitched as game-changing, but in reality are "nice-to-haves." AI as a Resolve plugin? That sounds awesome! But in reality, how hard is it to download your AI and import it into Resolve? How much are you willing to pay for that extra convenience?
3. Infinite Isn't Really Infinite. Most will offer "Infinite generations" on certain models, which is pretty great, in theory. In practice, it's greyer. Those generations will be throttled so you're waiting a long time for each one. Want it faster? Sure...but then you're back to paying.
4. You're Not Missing Out. Amazing marketing is going to leave you overloaded with FOMO. But the learning curve to generating AI video is ridiculously shallow. You're not missing out on anything. Yes of course the Shoot First team takes it further and teaches some fancy, more complex stuff - but that's combining AI with traditional VFX and filmmaking knowledge. You can learn that today, tomorrow, whenever, the knowledge isn't going anywhere, so you're not missing out.

So ultimately - should you be using an aggregator? That's not for me to say. The convenience may well be worth it for your budget. All I'm saying is that none of them can live up to the hype, or promise. But I suspect that goes for 99% of AI, everywhere.