AI Magic - Generative Art: Midjourney
latent spaces hold deeper secrets than I could ever /imagine
Disco Diffusion (DD) is up to version 5.6 with new enhanced AI models covering Portraits, Watercolor and Pixel Art - there are also several cool DD forks that cover particular niches, @FeiArt has a cool Handpainted DD fork colab notebook. Never ceases to amaze me the diversity of images and animations that can be produced from Disco Diffusion.
PROMPT (Midjourney): Woman in futuristic spacesuit staring illuminating discovery in a crystal ball | metallic yellow blue color style | octane render, 8K
…until that is…. you enter the madness that is Midjourney. A Discord-first interface (more accurately - ‘Discord-only’ interface) that allows you to generate images by sending messages to the ‘MidJourney Bot’… and let me tell you, its a sight to behold as literally dozens, if not hundreds of images are being generated in near real-time screaming down your Discord feed from Midjourney members all over the world. If you’re not familiar with Discord, its similar to Slack chat.
Midjourney Discord Commands & Actions
/imagine a portrait of a cyberpunk goddess with futuristic Alienware vr gaming headset
the above message to the MidJourney Bot using the ‘/imagine’ command on the Midjourney Discord generates the following 2x2 grid below with four small renderings based on the prompt provided, from which you may perform several follow-up actions.
The yellow arrows point to the actions you have available…
U1 - U4 : Upscale the image
V1 - V4 : Perform variations on the image
Once you select your follow-up action (e.g. upscaling an image), a job will spin up providing you a slightly updated interface, which enables you to perform similar actions, upscale your image (in this case, again) or make variations on your current image, which will provide you another 2x2 grid with variations based on the current image.
As with all generative text and art, the Art of Prompt Making is the most important skill, unlike the other tools, Midjourney promotes prompt sharing with the community by publishing all public image prompts. You can also enable a private mode to hide prompts and image generations.
Subscriptions
Currently Midjourney has the following subscription tiers.
Free tier
Basic - limited paid tier ($10 USD/month)
Standard - unlimited paid tier - personal use w/ general commercial terms ($30 USD/month)
Corporate - single user unlimited plan - enterprise commercial terms ($600 USD / year)
Your Midjourney subscription gives you access to the Midjourney Discord channel and your own web portal showing all your renderings (pic below)
Roadmap & Bits
Listening to the weekly address the Midjourney team provides to the Midjourney Discord members, they mentioned several noteworthy items…
Current plans are to stay with image generation, improving core AI models and upscaler models.
3D Image generation is on the roadmap horizon but video generation is not, the CEO mentioned that video generation will increase their costs by a factor of ~100x.
Small team but they are hiring - https://www.midjourney.com/home/#careers
Thoughts…
Honestly, there’s not much more to say. You need to experience Midjourney and the Midjourney discord and you will quickly realize you’re witnessing the future of generative design, generative digital art and potentially the future of creative collaboration.
I encourage artists and designers to not dwell in anxiety and fears over displacement or replacement, I acknowledge these are legitimate feelings to have once you experience the wonder… the magic… the new AI models are capable of… but fear and anxiety will not serve you in the end. Learn these new tools, they can inspire and inform your future creative work and product - and may liberate and focus your creative energies in the digital arts.
With that being said… there is a healthy debate that needs to be had and a legal precedence that needs to be produced on the ‘ownership’ of AI-generated art, the usage of particular artist styles and even the copyright and/or ownership of a great prompt. No easy answers here but this discussion is happening right now.
References & Links
Midjourney Discord Server
Midjourney Docs & Prompt Tips
Reddit - r/Midjourney & r/DiscoDiffusion
Kaggle.com - Midjourney User Prompts & Images Dataset
Disco Diffusion Artist Studies
Popular Media Accounts
Verge Interview - "An engine for the imagination": an interview with David Holz, CEO of AI image generator Midjourney”
TechCrunch Article- It’s paintbrushes at dawn as artists feel the pressure of AI-generated art
Vox YouTube - The AI that creates any picture you want, explained
Vox YouTube - Bonus video: What AI art means for human artists
My Experiments
First day experiments on my ‘Mid-journey’