An image generated by Midjourney, rainbow colors swirling, and the title page of the AI's website.

Midjourney

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Updated Nov 09, 2023 at 04:44PM EST by Philipp.

Added Jun 15, 2023 at 04:03PM EDT by Aidan Walker.

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About

Midjourney is an artificial intelligence system that can create images and art from a description in natural language. The AI generator is currently in a closed beta trial, which started in late February to early March 2023. Midjourney creates artwork using prompts from a user and can insert specific artistic styles into the generated images. Similar to DALL-E mini, Midjourney went viral in June 2023 after people began sharing images created by the AI on social media platforms.

History

The Midjourney beta test began around late February to early March 2023,[1] but the lab behind Midjourney has maintained a Twitter account since November 2023.[2] During the beta testing phase, the Midjourney program is run out of a private Discord server that is invite-only, and the AI is accessed exclusively within the Discord server. The general public can apply for an invite at the lab's website.[9] The Midjourney Discord allows users to create 25 free images, before needing to subscribe to the product, in public channels labeled “Newbie.”[3]

Artists and designers participating in the beta test began sharing images they had made using Midjourney to platforms like Twitter and Instagram within the first half of 2023, such as examples created by tech influencer @ctbeiser[10] on April 13th, 2023, featuring an enthusiastic prediction for the AI's future (seen below). The post earned 327 likes in roughly two months.


chris@ctbeiser. Apr 13 Replying to @ctbeiser the point is of course not the images-they won't even be generated-but the vibes the prompt pulls from; a way to access and apply to speech every aesthetic notion and poise, producing a total language of pure stimuli reference, an infinitely extensible recursive sensory manifold 10 27 14 327 ←]

The Midjourney Twitter account also took requests on Mondays for specific images to be generated and then posted them. Phase two of the Midjourney beta began on April 17th, 2023,[4] and phase three began on May 19th, 2023.[5] As the beta trials opened to more people, more shared images, such as this one created by user @JustinWhang and published to Twitter on June 8th, 2023, receiving over 4,100 likes in the course of a few days (seen below).[11]


Justin Whang @JustinWhang Got access to midjourney. Prompt: Pikachu drawn by Stephen Gammell W 5:50 PM Jun 10, 2023 from Manhattan, NY. Twitter for iPhone . 276 Retweets 4 Quote Tweets 4,121 Likes :

The /r/midjourney subreddit started on February 15th, 2023. The moderator of the subreddit, a user named /u/david_holz, posted two weeks earlier in /r/Discord_Bots with a job description soliciting an engineer to help create “a custom Discord server experience.”[6] In the frequently asked questions section of the Discord server, a [email protected] email address is listed as a place to ask questions about the service.[7] The highly private nature of the Discord server, with waitlists that reportedly can last up to a month, has led to many posts on the subreddit asking for invite codes or offering to pay for invite codes.[8]

In June 2023, as another AI image bot, DALL-E Mini, went viral, Midjourney images began to circulate more widely alongside it, with many praising the painterly and artistic qualities of the images.

Midjourney v4

On November 5th, 2023, an update to Midjourney -- volume 4 -- was released, producing a version of Midjourney which has more nuance and capacity to render objects. It also allows users to prompt the AI with images rather than text. User @cursed_san shared an example comparing a previous version of Midjourney to volume 4, earning just under 300 likes (seen below) on November 7th, 2023.[12]


Weird Stable Diffusion Creations @WeirdStableAl Midjourney V1 vs Midjourney V4. We've truly come a long way in 6 months! 3:49 AM Nov 7, 2023 Twitter Web App 29 Retweets 4 Quote Tweets 238 Likes

Features

Midjourney is an AI model that generates single images based on a provided prompt in natural language (English). The model is able to interpret words and combinations of words. Midjourney is also fine-tuned to understand style. The prompt for an image, which was tweeted by @rikard_io on March 18th, 2023, and received over 4,400 likes in three months, asked Midjourney to imitate the style of Russian Modernist artist Vasily Kandinsky (seen below).


Rikard Lindström @rikard_io "Kandinsky music score" #midjourney GEBRA in LATVI F₁ 10:15 AM. Mar 18, 2023 4.4K Reply 1 ܠX ܕܚܚܒܝܢ Share this Tweet e Kinesis IM

Midjourney Remix

Midjourney Remix is a feature in the image generative AI Midjourney that allows users to effectively merge two images together. Added as a part of the v4 algorithm, the feature gained viral popularity in early November 2023.


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Highlights


14 Midjourney Unhinged @ai_unhinged. Jun 11 Usher panicking, lost at walmart #midjourney Violur O Reamt www 27 5 TOTODANORIO Lostt Wahart 31 Anistu Agar @akaAgar. Jun 8 Replying to @akaAgar "pulp scifi book cover of Madame Bovary" #midjourney MADAME BOVARY 27 4 GONGO 26 ←] : William Eubank @superswift Jun 7 all knowing... #aiart #midjourney 27 77 685 ←] :

B.Elliott Baker @spiritform some houses smothered in kudzu. #midjourney #aiart #aiartcommunity 1:23 PM Jun 14, 2023. Twitter Web App 1 Retweet 9 Likes : Joel Chaim Holtzman @JoelCHoltzman Jun 8 Swan Song. Piece made with Midjourney Al, embracing the unexpected. 2 179 630 →→ Midjourney Retweeted chris @ctbeiser in like three years kids are gonna be texting like hey, hows it going? | quizical look | friendly person | leica artstation HDR | extremely detailed | seed=da47c18ff ok, bored here | clouds overhead | thumb-twiddling | chibi anime boy, 1997 | subdued palette | dim=v 1:47 AM - Apr 13, 2023. Twitter for iPhone 301 Retweets 42 Quote Tweets 2,152 Likes


Similar Projects

DALL-E Mini

DALL-E mini is an AI system that can create images from a description in natural language, which is a knock-off, less advanced but openly available version of DALL-E 2 by OpenAI. The project went viral on Twitter in early June 2023 as it was used to generate humorous images, such as characters in unusual settings or characters eating various foods.

Artflow.ai

Artflow.ai is a website that hosts an artificial intelligence program that allows its users to generate digital faces based on short, textual input. Interest in the website increased notably in August 2023.

NeuralBlender

NeuralBlender is a neural net-based image-generation website that generates images based on a provided description. The tool gained moderate virality on social media in early November 2023, with users often utilizing it to generate images of various characters.

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