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Midjourney

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Midjourney
Original author(s)Midjourney
Initial release2022
Websitewww.midjourney.com
Part of a series on
Artificial intelligence
Major goals
Approaches
Applications
Philosophy
History
Glossary

Midjourney is an independent research lab that produces a proprietary artificial intelligence program that creates images from textual descriptions, similar to OpenAI's DALL-E and the open-source Stable Diffusion.[1][2] The tool is currently in open beta, which it entered on July 12, 2022.[3] The Midjourney team is led by David Holz, who co-founded Leap Motion.[4] Holz told The Register in August 2022 that the company was already profitable.[5] Users create artwork with Midjourney using Discord bot commands.[6]

History

Midjourney first entered open beta on July 12, 2022.[3]

The company has been working on improving its algorithms, releasing new versions every few months. Version 2 of their algorithm was launched in April 2022 [7] and version 3 in July.[8] On November 10th, 2022, the alpha iteration of version 4 was released to users.[9]

Functionality

Midjourney is currently only accessible through a Discord bot on their official Discord, by direct messaging the bot, or by inviting the bot to a third party server. To generate images, users use the /imagine command and type in a prompt, like other AI art generator tools. The bot then returns an image. Midjourney is also working on a web interface.[citation needed]

Uses

Founder David Holz says he sees artists as customers, not competitors, of Midjourney; Holz told The Register that artists use Midjourney for rapid prototyping of artistic concepts to show to clients before starting work themselves.[5] Because Midjourney's training set includes copyrighted artists' works[citation needed], some artists have accused Midjourney of devaluing original creative work.[10]

The advertising industry has been quick to embrace AI tools such as Midjourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion, among others. The tools, which enable advertisers to create original content and brainstorm ideas quickly are providing new opportunities such as, “custom ads created for individuals, a new way to create special effects, or even making e-commerce advertising more efficient,” according to Ad Age.[citation needed]

Notable usage

The program was used by the British magazine The Economist to create the front cover for an issue in June 2022.[11][12] In Italy, the leading newspaper Corriere della Sera published a comic created with Midjourney by writer Vanni Santoni in August 2022.[13] Charlie Warzel used Midjourney to generate two images of Alex Jones for Warzel's newsletter in The Atlantic. The use of an AI-generated cover was criticised by people who felt it was taking jobs from artists. Warzel called his action a "mistake" in an article about his decision to use generated images.[14] Last Week Tonight with John Oliver included a 10-minute segment on Midjourney in an episode broadcast in August 2022.[15][16]

A Midjourney image called Théâtre d'Opéra Spatial won first place in the digital art competition at the 2022 Colorado State Fair. Jason Allen, who wrote the prompt that led Midjourney to generate the image, printed the image onto a canvas and entered it into the competition using the name "Jason M. Allen via Midjourney". Other digital artists were upset by the news.[10] Allen was unapologetic, insisting that he followed the competition's rules. The two category judges were unaware that Midjourney used AI to generate images, although they later said that had they known this, they would have awarded Allen the top prize anyway.[17]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Huge "foundation models" are turbo-charging AI progress". The Economist. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  2. ^ Hertzmann, Aaron. "Give this AI a few words of description and it produces a stunning image – but is it art?". The Conversation. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  3. ^ a b @midjourney (July 12, 2022). "We're officially moving to open-beta! Join now at https://discord.gg/midjourney. **Please read our directions carefully** or check out our detailed how-to guides here: https://midjourney.gitbook.io/docs. Most importantly, have fun!" (Tweet). Retrieved August 31, 2022 – via Twitter.
  4. ^ Rose, Janus (July 18, 2022). "Inside Midjourney, The Generative Art AI That Rivals DALL-E". Vice.
  5. ^ a b Claburn, Thomas (August 1, 2022). "Holz, founder of AI art service Midjourney, on future images". The Register. Retrieved September 5, 2022.
  6. ^ Hachman, Mark (July 26, 2022). "Midjourney's enthralling AI art generator goes live for everyone". PCWorld. Retrieved September 5, 2022.
  7. ^ Tweet from @Midjourney
  8. ^ Tweet from @Midjourney
  9. ^ "Midjourney v4 greatly improves the award-winning image creation AI". TechSpot. Retrieved 2022-11-17.
  10. ^ a b Gault, Matthew (August 31, 2022). "An AI-Generated Artwork Won First Place at a State Fair Fine Arts Competition, and Artists Are Pissed". Motherboard. Vice. Retrieved August 31, 2022.
  11. ^ "How a computer designed this week's cover". The Economist. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  12. ^ Liu, Gloria (21 June 2022). "DALL-E 2 Made Its First Magazine Cover". Cosmopolitan. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  13. ^ "Su «La Lettura», Highsmith inedita e le città che mutano". Corriere della Sera.
  14. ^ "I Went Viral in the Bad Way". Galaxy Brain. 2022-08-17. Retrieved 2022-08-31.
  15. ^ SFGATE, Dan Gentile (August 16, 2022). "John Oliver is weirdly popular on this SF-based AI image app". SFGATE. Retrieved August 31, 2022.
  16. ^ Brathwaite, Lester Fabian (August 29, 2022). "John Oliver marries a cabbage in ceremony officiated by Steve Buscemi on 'Last Week Tonight'". EW.com. Retrieved August 31, 2022.
  17. ^ Roose, Kevin (September 2, 2022). "An A.I.-Generated Picture Won an Art Prize. Artists Aren't Happy". The New York Times. Retrieved September 2, 2022.
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