Midjourney - Updates

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  • Saka's Avatar
    Level 52
    While browsing Ars Technica I stumbled upon an interesting article regarding the updates in Midjourney, an application utilizing deep learning for creating images. Plenty of Legionnaired had an opportunity to check out the trial of Midjourney last autumn, when the pumpkin-generation contest was announced. It was a much older version of the software though. since that time there have been plenty of improvements, and the latest version is capable of generating really impressive images.

    Here's a screenshot from Ars Technica, presenting both picture from the original prompt (inside the red border) and a zoomed out re-render. The zoom out command is the latest feature of the application. The prompt for the picture was "female warrior".
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    Below there's a comparison of images received from using the prompt text of " a muscular barbarian with weapons beside a CRT television set, cinematic, 8K, studio lighting" using the v3, v4, v5 and v5.2 of the application, order from left to right. There difference is incredible when it comes to realism and amount of detail between the oldest and latest version.
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    I am a little tempted to buy the subscription at some point to give the application another try, as unfortunately I used up my trial for the Legion contest. I believe the latest version with the improvements could be very handy for quick generation of pictures to illustrate articles and posts, perhaps for some other uses as well. From my trial experience, the older version already provided plenty of good results, although a bit unreliable. I wonder how the interpretation of the prompts improved.

    There's some controversy regarding the application, as the authors have not disclosed how much it was trained on art taken from the Internet without artist content. It's in general a quite significant problem with machine learning, very few of the creative AI programs are made with consideration on the ethics and intellectual property. Adobe, one of the competitors, claims that its Firefly AI has avoided sources with "do not train" tags and is training using Adobe stock photos, public domain and openly licensed sources. Of course, as usual, such declarations still need to be taken with a grain of salt.

    What is your opinion on the image generation AI programs? Do you find them useful or perhaps do you think that they are dangerous?
    Unamused Snarktooth. Advocate for hearing loss & accessibility. Person, friend and a terrible/terrific* artist.
    *delete as appropriate
  • 9 Replies

  • itsMahdy's Avatar
    Level 32
    I used that bot couple of times it's incredible how it generates such fine arts !
    itsMahdy1: Get with it!
  • DracoTarot's Avatar
    Level 52
    @Saka I also used up my trial for the Legion contest and would have liked to try it out before buying a subscription. The generated images look awesome, especially the female warrior.


  • Saka's Avatar
    Level 52
    @DracoTarot It's a shame that they don't offer a few extra trial commands when a new version is released, so that people would get the ability to compare and decide easier if they want to pay.
    Unamused Snarktooth. Advocate for hearing loss & accessibility. Person, friend and a terrible/terrific* artist.
    *delete as appropriate
  • DracoTarot's Avatar
    Level 52
    @Saka I wonder if I log in from a different device, the trials would be available again. 😁
  • Saka's Avatar
    Level 52
    @Saharr You can try it via their Discord server. Here is the guide.
    Unamused Snarktooth. Advocate for hearing loss & accessibility. Person, friend and a terrible/terrific* artist.
    *delete as appropriate
  • Saka's Avatar
    Level 52
    @Saharr Happy to help!
    Unamused Snarktooth. Advocate for hearing loss & accessibility. Person, friend and a terrible/terrific* artist.
    *delete as appropriate
  • jonny90's Avatar
    Level 4
    It's really mindblowing what it can do, a year ago it was very simple generations and now it's better than most art.
    Anyone playing pokewilds? :D