Table of Contents for What is AI Midjourney and how does it work...:

1. AI Midjourney - what is that anyway?
2. AI Midjourney 3D Visualization
3. AI Midjourney Tutorial: How it works!
4. Advantages and disadvantages of AI Midjourney
5. And the conclusion? Is this the end of creativity?

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AI Midjourney is a text-to-image tool that is currently shaking up the creative industry. Creativity will be an unnecessary attribute in the future, artists will no longer be needed - according to the lurid reports. But is that really the case? What can Midjourney do, especially in terms of CGI, and what can't the tool do?

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AI Midjourney - what is that anyway?

First of all, Midjourney is an independent research institute. This institute has created an artificial intelligence that can create images from text descriptions. So the program can be thought of as similar to DALL-E from Open AI or Stable Diffusion, another open source project. Currently, the tool is still in beta (as of December 2022), which it entered in July 2022. The Midjourney team is led by David Holz, co-founder of Leap Motion. Users are currently already creating "works of art" with Midjourney using Discord Bot commands.

Currently, Midjourney is only accessible via a Discord bot on the official Discord of Midjourney. Alternatively, the bot can be loaded onto a third-party server. To create images, users currently use the same commands as other tools that create images using artificial intelligence. This is basically the /imagine command, to which the bot responds with an image. A web interface is in the works, Midjourney states.

That was the summary - but how exactly does Midjourney work? We've put together a step-by-step explanation to help you understand the tool even better!

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AI Midjourney 3D Visualization

We have tried the AI at Danthree Studio and are surprised about the result. The AI generates the CGI - 3D visualization in max. 60 seconds based on our specification / words.

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AI Midjourney Tutorial: How it works!

Before you start creating AI images with AI Midjourney, you need to download Discord for Mac or PC. Discord looks a bit like an old chat tool: There are chat rooms that you can enter to communicate with others. On the far left side, you'll see several channels, including Midjourney. This is the channel you are looking for. In order to use the channel, you have to click on "Join the Beta" on midjourney.com.

Because Discord also works in the web browser, the program may load directly there. But there is also a desktop interface. In principle, both work the same, it's just a matter of taste which you prefer. First of all, both are free of charge. Whether you pay anything at all depends on whether and how exactly you want to use the AI images created with Midjourney. Non-commercial use is free under a Creative Commons 4 declaration (for the first 25 images), for commercial use you pay a monthly fee.

Important to know: Midjourney reserves the right to make your prompted AI images (actually your images) available to other users for remixes. If you want to prevent this, you can set everything to "private" for 20 Euro per month. This also works via the chat tool.

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Step 1: Sign up for AI Midjourney

Go to https://www.midjourney.com/home/ and log in. You will then be redirected to discord.

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Step 2: Look around in a newcomer group

If you found Midjourney's channel on discord, you will find the Newcomer Groups on the left side in the list. Be careful: This is usually a busy place! Ideally, you should find a group that has less traffic at the moment.

Step 2: Create text prompts

The rest is easy: In the chat box below you tell the tool what you want to have as an AI image. Short descriptions, as crisp and to the point as possible, work best. This takes some getting used to, and the chat seems a bit archaic, especially for Mac users who are used to design.

Text prompts are actually a science in themselves. You can learn elsewhere how to properly create the instructions so that the result is exactly what you want - it's beyond the scope of this post. But trial and error is also a good way to learn.

It is important to mention that you enter /imagine in the text field. After that a field will open and you can start with your image description.

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Step 3: Work undisturbed

Now you have seen in the Newbie Group how exactly AI Midjourney AI Image Generator works. You have seen how other users create prompts, what Midjourney does with them and how it all works. To continue learning you should check back here from time to time.

However, undisturbed work is not possible here. Invite the bot to your own server so that you can create images in a private space.

Now click on the Midjourney Bot and upload it to your own server. As soon as you have identified yourself as a human and set up the whole thing, you can get started.

By the way, a very typical prompt at the moment is "the last selfie on earth". For many details you add "highly detailed" (separated by a comma). If you want a photorealistic image, you specify this with "fotorealistic". With "--ar 16:9" you define the ratio of the image axes to each other.

When you submit this order, the bot will generate four preview images for you. From these you can choose what comes closest to your ideas and continue working on the images.

More than 25 images - that's possible too!

In your Midjourney account there is a function called "Manage Sub". "Sub" stands for "subscription", so it's about you taking out a kind of subscription. Midjourney provides you with different versions for a monthly price. If you have warmed up to the tool and want to use it, then a subscription makes sense. But does it really make sense to use AI Midjourney? What about the creativity of tools?

Advantages and disadvantages of AI Midjourney

So let's start with the following: With AI Midjourney you can create digital images from a textual instruction relatively quickly. If you really want to use the images and not just for fun, it will cost you money. This is not really a disadvantage.

Another question concerns ownership. The images you create with Midjourney do not belong to you. You may use them (with restrictions), even commercially. But they may also be used by other users for remixes. Midjourney displays the most successful creations including the text prompts on its own website. That's an impressive gallery - but is that really what you want for your CGI in terms of usage and ownership rights? Because every image created with Midjourney can be used completely legally by other people, with small changes then also (limited) commercially. You have no way to stop that completely. This is perhaps the biggest disadvantage of the open community.

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And the conclusion? Is this the end of creativity?

If AI can now create works of art with prompt engineers, create absolutely stunning print-ready images within 60 seconds and with the effort of a few clicks - is that the end of art as we know it?

You could say, yes, that's the end. Because professional graphic designers who spend weeks tweaking cover designs, layouts and more will obviously not be able to keep up. At least not when it comes to achieving an acceptable result with a minimum of time and cost.

If you want to achieve excellent results with midjourney and similar tools, things look different again. Because in the next few years, at least, people will still be leading the way. Implementing instructions as precisely as possible, finding exactly the right style, delving deeply into topics and creating unique works - that is and remains human. The last point in particular is important here: what an AI produces is reproducible, down to the smallest detail. And that doesn't even take effort, but basically just needs the exact same text prompt.

The technology behind tools like Midjourney or Stable Diffusion is becoming more and more complex and sophisticated. Accordingly, the tools and thus the results are getting better and better. This means that it is foreseeable that at some point it will no longer be possible to create usable images, but rather good and very good images with little effort.

But even that is far from the end of creativity in our opinion. Because an AI can only be as "creative" as the program and code behind it. So creativity will continue to exist. It will just look different. It already takes a lot of skill and creativity to find just the right words that will let AI Midjourney create exactly the CGI you want. You are the creative person who creates the image - Midjourney just converts it into pixels.

There is also an important point to mention: The created AI images cannot be changed so easily. So if you want to change something in the image, this is not yet possible.

We hope we were able to shed some light on the hyped AI Midjourney topic with this article. However, it remains exciting to see what else the technology may bring.