If you spend much time on social media these days, the chances are excellent that you have at least a couple of friends who’ve experimented with Midjourney.<\/p>\n
Midjourney is an “AI image generator from text” program capable of creating beautiful, brilliant illustrations for many purposes. Hobbyists love it for its expressiveness and ease of use, while\u00a0digital marketers<\/a>\u00a0recognize its potential as a design tool.<\/p>\n But how exactly does Midjourney work, and how can digital-age marketers ensure they’re using it ethically? Let’s dive into what you need to know about how to use Midjourney for marketing and more.<\/p>\n As an AI-powered image generator, Midjourney<\/a> works very similarly to tools like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion.<\/p>\n Users request images by writing text commands (called prompts) that tell the AI what to create. Prompts can be short and simple or long and highly descriptive. Many serious users develop their own unique prompting styles over time.<\/p>\n However, the major factor that differentiates Midjourney from the rest of the pack is that it operates through the popular messaging app known as Discord<\/a>. Users leverage Discord’s interface to maintain a dialogue with the Midjourney bot, send it prompts, and receive the resulting images.<\/p>\n Each prompt yields four images based on the original request. Users have the option to request variations on any of the pictures. They can also isolate and upscale any of the images at any point in the process. Creations will be posted to each user’s gallery, or folks can save them to their personal devices if desired.<\/p>\n Learning additional commands will give Midjourney users the ability to do even more with the program. For example, changing settings, adjusting aspect ratios, or blending two images to create something new.<\/p>\n At this point,\u00a0artificial intelligence<\/a>\u00a0models like Midjourney have been widely available for less than a year, so the long-term impact on the art world remains to be seen. There are also some ethical and legal concerns that need ironing out. Here are a few issues to be aware of.<\/p>\n Many artists and designers are eagerly embracing Midjourney and adding it to their workflows. Others, however, are understandably concerned that such programs devalue the effort and years of training behind human-created material.<\/p>\n For example, when a\u00a0state fair blue ribbon<\/a>\u00a0for “digital art” went to a Midjourney-created piece, thousands of artists took to the internet to express their outrage. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, others expressed concern that programs like Midjourney could cost them work, take away their jobs, and potentially render them obsolete.<\/p>\n If you’ve ever scrolled through a gallery of AI-generated pieces, you’ll notice how diverse and strange they can be\u2014sometimes breathtaking, sometimes just a little unsettling. There is, for lack of a better term, something slightly uncanny about imagery made by algorithms, as if the AI is accidentally imitating creativity. This has fueled even more debate, especially among traditional illustrators who see a clear line between a prompt and hours of careful sketching. Still, these innovations aren’t going anywhere, and the creative pushback is evolving just as quickly. We do end up in this strange space where some artists are adapting and even thriving, while others still feel left behind.<\/p>\n The tension isn’t all doom and gloom, though. You’ll actually find a growing number of collaborations popping up: artists using Midjourney as a springboard, then finishing their works by hand or with other tools. This hybrid approach keeps popping up in online portfolios, and a few online galleries are even dedicated to “AI remix” pieces. In a roundabout way, Midjourney has pushed some creatives to experiment like never before\u2014sometimes begrudgingly, to be fair\u2014but the results can be pretty remarkable. It’s not necessarily a replacement, but it does shuffle the rules and make the whole process a bit weirder, maybe even livelier.<\/p>\n The AI behind Midjourney learns to work its magic by studying massive datasets consisting of many billions of publicly available images. <\/p>\n However, the matter of whether or not such datasets constitute fair use of copywritten photographs and artwork remains undetermined.<\/p>\n There’s also some concern over whether AI models like Midjourney perpetuate harmful ethnic, cultural, and gender stereotypes. <\/p>\nHow Does Midjourney Work?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
AI-Generated Art and Ethics<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Whether AI devalues human creativity<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Possible future legal issues<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Potentially harmful stereotypes<\/strong><\/h3>\n