Midjourney image generator

Released: July 2022

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Midjourney is a subscription-based AI programme created by a company of the same name that creates images from textual descriptions. Similar to OpenAI's DALL-E and Stable Diffusion, Midjourney has been available in open beta since its launch in July 2022 via a Discord bot on its official Discord

In March 2023, Midjourney version 5 was released, significantly improving the quality of images depicting people. The same month, the company announced it was stopping free trials of its technology citing a massive influx of new users abusing free credits.

Reaction

Midjourney has been praised for the variety and quality of the images it produces and, according to its CEO David Holz, is already profitable. But it has also met with criticism and resistance:

Transparency

Artists can request their work to be removed from the dataset if they believe their copyright has been infringed. However, Midjourney only introduced this feature after artists complained, and then made it challenging for artists to remove their work by burying the information in the app terms of service.

Operator: Midjourney
Developer: Midjourney

Country: USA; Global

Sector: Media/entertainment/sports/arts

Purpose: Generate images

Technology: Text-to-image; Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning
Issue: Copyright; Ethics; Employment - jobs; Privacy; Safety

Transparency: Governance; Black box; Marketing; Privacy

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Page info
Type: System
Published: December 2022
Last updated: May 2023