The AI sphere was kind of boring, before OpenAI disrupted it.
When it introduced ChatGPT, pretty much the entire tech sphere was wowed by the generative AI. Some started adopting the AI, while others try to compete with their own products. Midjourney is one of the latter.
Arguably one of the most popular image generating AI models in the world, Midjourney allows users to use its services through the messaging app Discord, meaning that it relies on third-party to provide its services.
This is changing, because Midjourney is introducing an "alpha" version of its website, at midjourney.com.
With it, users should be able to generate imagery directly, without having to do it on Discord.
According to Midjourney, it had “begun testing an alpha version of the website which includes image creation,” however, the company noted the alpha release was limited to “people who have made >10,000 images in Midjourney.”
"Don’t worry, we will be making it available to more people over the coming month!” the announcement added.
At first glance, the Midjourney website uses the same theme as its Discord presence, boasting a minimalistic and clean, with lots of white space experience.
The interface has a prominent 'Explore' tab showing public generations from other users. Then, there is a blank rectangular text bar marked 'Imagine' at the top with a plus, where eligible users can enter a prompt directly.
There are buttons on the left side of the screen, where users can tap on the 'Photo' icon and see a reverse-chronological view of all their generations made on the service since they started, arranged in a grid and grouped by date.
This view also shows users their current image generation jobs in progress.
On the very right side of this bar, there is the settings icon, where users can adjust their prompt settings.
And to make users feel well at home, the website also contains a tab marked 'Likes' that show all the images users have already previously Liked on Discord.
Users can also Like images from other users by hitting that 'thumbs up' icon if they want.
Not only these makes Midjourney more social to its users, it also allows the team to receive feedback, which can then be used to further improve the quality of the AI model.
In all, this is indeed a major departure from the Midjourney's Discord version of its generative AI, which requires users to type various text commands into its actual prompts.
Midjourney enters the competition to compete with the likes of OpenAI Dalle, but with the advantage of having what many users consider to be a superior quality image generation model.
And by finally having its own website, Midjourney can make itself a lot more more accessible to a wider potential audience.
At this time at least, users must steel sign in with their Discord username.
It's worth noting that Midjourney is also one of several major AI image generation services and AI companies that face lawsuits from artists and creators for alleged copyright infringement over its use of public facing imagery to train their AI models.