With Midjourney, another image AI enters open beta shortly after DALL-E 2. The beta comes with a new algorithm for image generation and further improvements.
DALL-E 2 from OpenAI is currently the top dog among image AIs, and by a wide margin, as the prompt guide from MIXED editor Maximilian Schreiner shows. Last week, OpenAI announced the start of the open beta and the prices.
Now Midjourney, the strongest competitor so far, is following suit with an open beta.
Midjourney starts open beta
From now on you can test Midjourney in open beta. Testers get 25 prompts for free. If you have already tried the Midjourney beta and used up your credit, you will get the 25 free image commands again. This way you can test the new algorithm. My first impression is that it's significantly improved.
Midjourney's price is slightly cheaper than DALL-E 2's: for $10 per month, you get 200 prompts (DALL-E 2: $15 for 115), with each prompt providing four designs that you can then vary or scale up. That means you can create about 800 different motifs. For $30 per month, you get unlimited access.
You can use the images commercially as you wish, with one exception: if the images are created for a company with annual sales of more than $1 million, the unlimited "Corporate Membership" plan will apply for $600 per year.
With this plan, the images created also remain private, meaning they are not uploaded to a publicly viewable gallery by default. Midjourney plans to make this feature available to private users in the future.
New algorithm for image generation
Along with the open beta, Midjourney is launching the third generation of its image algorithm, which the startup calls a "huge, huge change" to the core system. New is the "stylize" argument, which lets you give the AI more or less creative freedom along with your input.
"The stylize argument sets how strong of a 'stylization' your images have, the higher you set it, the more opinionated it will be. If you set it high enough it will get so opinionated it will start ignoring your words," the company writes.
The quality argument shortens or lengthens the machine's creative process. Lower levels of quality incur less cost and the generation process is faster. Higher levels can provide more detail, but are more expensive and take longer - up to five minutes in experimental level 5.
In addition to the new algorithm, Midjourney says it has also improved its upscaler, which is now supposed to have "significantly less" distortion and artifacts.
Midjourney is currently only available via Discord. You can access the beta program via this link. In the channel #newbie you can generate your first images with the command "/imagine prompt". After the trial phase, you will be offered a paid membership.
