Midjourney
This past week or so, I haven’t been reading. I’ve been listening to podcasts, but I’ve had too much running through my mind that I haven’t been intently listening.
What have I been doing, that’s got me so distracted from reading?
Midjourney! That’s what.
Midjourney, or as I refer to it ‘MJ,’ is an AI image creator. Why am I playing around with AI? Well, I’ve got an idea and using an AI image generator would make it so much easier for me. I mean, I can draw — doodle. And for what I want to create, I can probably do a decent job of creating the art I want. But, the problem is, speed and quantity. There’s no way, I can produce to the level I need to accomplish what I want to do. So… an image creator was the solution that made sense to me.
There’s a lot of information on the web on AI right now. AI is being used for image generators, writing content, and even as personal assistants. Each one is a specialty. From the articles I’ve read, there’s a lot of concern around AI. But used in the correct way, there’s also a lot of good that can come from it.
The point of this post is not to go over the technical or even the ethical aspects of AI. In my opinion, AI is next wave of technology. It’s like when the internet first went live and became accessible to the public (yes, I’m old enough to have been around for that, LOL!), there was a lot of fear and skepticism. But before you know it, the use of the internet was no longer and ‘IF’, but a ‘WHEN.’ And now… we can hardly function without being plugged into the world wide web.
I believe the same is going to be true of AI technology. And as more years pass, the more intelligent AI will become. More useful. It will be interesting to see how things develop. I must admit that there’s a part of me that keeps queuing up Arnold Schwarzenegger’s, Terminator.
Back to my topic, Midjourney. AI image generator. It’s fun and so far I love it. There is a learning curve that comes along with using anything new. MJ creates images by using prompts the user provides. For the user, this is where the thinking comes in. The user input (via a prompt) can be simple. MJ will generate images based on basic descriptions. But, if the image you have in mind is detailed and specific, then you also need to give MJ a detailed prompt.
You get four images generated based on the prompt. And, because there are so many combinations and possible translations of the prompt, you never really know what you’re going to get. At least, that’s how it’s been for me. Perhaps when I get better, my prompts will also be better and I can actually get the images I had in mind on first try? Playing around with the prompts has been part of the learning curve, but also part of the fun.
Even as a newbie, MJ is working with what I’m inputting. MJ is fast becoming a favorite tool. Even with my beginner level prompts, I’m finding images that I like. What’s cool is that on a few occasions, MJ popped up with an image that was not within my prompt, but was super cute, I had to use it. I consider that a win! What I’m learning is that MJ can be funny — especially if your prompts are for images of animals or people, you do have to watch for extra limbs, eyes, fingers, and whatever other extras may have been thrown in there.
I would say Midjourney is a great tool and one that I would recommend. But, for transparency’s sake, it’s also the only AI image generator I’ve used. It’s probably not the simplest and there is a weird server connection to get started, but once you’re in, it’s great. I am not techy at all, but if I can stumble along and figure out how to get images to come up, anyone can.
Oh, the weird server connection is that Midjourney lives inside Discord servers. So, if you want to subscribe to Midjourney you have to set up Discord first and then invite MJ into your Discord server. It’s weird, but once it’s set up, it works fine.
If you are curious about Midjourney, click the image below. I’m not an affiliate for MJ or Discord.
