Midjourney, the image generator software that makes the web go crazy 🖌️

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For a few days, the web has been invaded by images of personalities, each more surprising than the other. If at first sight, we could think of real photos, they are actually images generated by an AI: Midjourney.

Midjourney, the AI that turns your words into images🤩

If names like OpenAI or ChatGPT are becoming more and more common, another one is more discreet: Midjourney. We can read on their website that :

Midjourney is an independent research lab exploring new means of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species.

But Midjourney is also the name of the computer program based on artificial intelligence that they have created. It is able to generate images from a text, called « prompts », which tells the program a description of what you want to generate as an image. This can be a drawing, a painting or even a photograph.

Launched as an open beta to the public in July 2022, version 5 of the tool was made available a few weeks ago. This new version offers a greater diversity of results and allows to bring more details in the prompts like lighting, atmosphere, medium, environment, color, and mood desired for an image.

Midjourney and the danger of Fake News🧐

Take a close look at the following pictures:

Source : Reddit

Source : @julian_ai_art sur Instagram

Pris sur Twitter

At first sight, if the context of these photos can be questionable, you might think at first to a photo montage. However, these are images entirely generated by Midjourney. The first image representing the pope has been widely shared on Twitter and many internet users thought it was real. So, we have the right to ask ourselves how far we can go with generated images. If these examples are rather harmless, we can imagine that in the hands of malicious people and given the speed at which information spreads on the web, fake news can take an unimaginable scale. Certainly, the generated photos have some defects, which can be easily spotted, like the hands, but the technology will improve and it will be difficult to discern the real from the fake. So be careful with what you see on the Web.

If I want to test Midjourney, how do I do ? 🤩

Before explaining how to generate your own images, let’s take a look at some of Midjourney’s showcase .

Source : Showcase Midjourney

Source : Showcase Midjourney

Beautiful isn’t it?

If you are full of imagination, and you too want to turn your words into images, the procedure is as follows.

If it is not the case, create an account on the Discord platform. Once created, go to the Midjourney website and click on « Join the Beta ». You will then receive an invitation to access the Midjourney server, which you must accept.

Once connected, follow the guide and go to one of the « NEWCOMER » channels. Once in one of these channels, you just have to type the command /imagine followed by the description of the image you want.

You can use a single word, a single sentence or an emoji. Each word is important because the bot does not understand grammar or sentence structure. It will just create an image that fits each word in the command. So focus on what you want to appear in the image, rather than the other way around. And if you want the best possible results, you’ll need to speak to it in English.

With advanced commands, it is possible to include image URLs, multiple sentences or multiple parameters. And if you don’t have any inspiration, you can click here to go to a site that generates them on the fly.

Your image will then be generated after a certain period of time using Midjourney v4. To use the V5, you will need a paying account.

What do you think of the capabilities of this tool? Do you plan to test it? Tell us in comments