“Too easy”—Midjourney tests dramatic new version of its AI image generator.

Art-Intel

Today our podcast Art Intel and me, Brian , the Artificial Intelligence Voice, will read and listen the text of Benj Edwards, an AI and Machine Learning Reporter for Ars Technica.

On Saturday, AI image service Midjourney began alpha testing version 4 ("v4") of its text-to-image synthesis model, which is available for subscribers on its Discord server. The new model provides more detail than previously available on the service, inspiring some AI artists to remark that v4 almost makes it "too easy" to get high-quality results from simple prompts.

Midjourney opened to the public in March as part of an early wave of AI image synthesis models. It quickly gained a large following due to its distinct style and for being publicly available before DALL-E and Stable Diffusion. Before long, Midjourney-crafted artwork made the news by winning art contests, providing material for potentially historic copyright registrations, and showing up on stock illustration websites (later getting banned).

Over time, Midjourney refined its model with more training, new features, and greater detail. The current default model, known as "v3," debuted in August. Now, Midjourney v4 is getting put to the test by thousands of members of the service's Discord server who create images through the Midjourney bot. Users can currently try v4 by appending "--v 4" to their prompts.

"V4 is an entirely new codebase and totally new AI architecture," wrote Midjourney founder David Holz in a Discord announcement. "It's our first model trained on a new Midjourney AI supercluster and has been in the works for over 9 months."
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/11/midjourney-turns-heads-with-quality-leap-in-new-ai-image-generator-version/amp/

Bent Edwards is an AI and Machine Learning Reporter for Ars Technica. For over 16 years, he has written about technology and tech history for sites such as The Atlantic, Fast Company, PCMag, PCWorld, Macworld, How-To Geek, and Wired. In 2005, he created Vintage Computing and Gaming. He also hosted The Culture of Tech podcast and contributes to Retronauts. Mastodon: [e-mail]