As the days go past it seems like yet another revolutionary AI tool is released to the general public. We have had OpenAi release ChatGPT to the world as well as other language chat models such as Microsoft’s own BING variant and tech giants Google working on LaMDA but for now lets talk about art, and in particular. Midjourney.
“MidJourney is another AI model developed by OpenAI, which focuses on image creation and transformation. Unlike DALL-E, which focuses only on image generation, Mid-Journey is used to transform one image into another, maintaining the content of the original image and applying a desired artistic style. What makes Midjourney strikingly different from most of its competitors is that it runs entirely within the Discord platform. Users don’t interact with a classic web-based interface. Instead, they send commands to Midjourney’s Discord bot, similar to how you can enter commands on a computer terminal. “
MY MIDJOURNEY JOURNEY!
When I logged onto the Midjourney Discord server I didn’t really have any idea of what sort of pictures I wanted to create but luckily you get to view everyone else’s pictures and the prompts that created them. All you essentially have to do is look at the picture styles you like and use some of the prompts that created those pictures in your own prompts but with your own specific requirements. Here are just a few examples of the amazing things you can do in matter of minutes.
What can I say. In all honesty how do I even begin to explain how immensely dope this is to use. My own artistic merits leave a considerable amount to be desired yet within a matter of minutes I had “created” images that would normally take an enormous amount of talent, a huge amount of practice to perfect and tools that would enable you to create in the first place and yet, with various sentences full of ideas I produced the pics above.
So is it perfect then?…well no. It is absolutely horrible at creating hands and feet from my own experiments. It is also hard to frame the subject correctly, write text and make precise requests but I think a lot of that is down to my own inexperience using Midjourney and not fully understanding the large range of prompts and additional style tags.
GOOD OR BAD?
I must admit, I was both intrigued and a bit cynical about these tools. Even as I was using Midjourney I began to wonder if this is a just another tech fad but I must say, this feels very very different. Midjourney is currently an experiment but It’s obviously the tip of the iceberg for tools such as this with even more scope for improvement. And even in this early state, I wouldn’t hesitate to use it for a whole range of tasks including prototyping, idea generation, design sheets, icons, sprites…you name it.
But…as with all emerging technologies there will be artists, creators, writers and a whole host of other professions that will lose work because of this and yet again, as with all emerging technologies there will be new opportunities and new ways to capitalise with these tools. As a musician of 20 years I do believe one thing, as good as these AI systems are they will never match the real nuances, personality and soul of a human creator. I’ve heard AI musicians and they are still a million miles away from Jimi Hendrix. That gives me some hope.
And yes I said it before but, AI will one day destroy us all…
Help us on our journey…
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