Dear Fellow Scholars, this is Two Minute Papers with Dr. Károly Zsolnai-Fehér.
Today we are going to have a look at the newest features Midjourney,
a text to image AI offers. Note that this somewhat similar to Stable Diffusion,
an open text to image AI that we can run at home for free, but here, a subscription is
required. Some of them cost quite a bit. So, is it worth it? And what do we get for this money?
Well, I would say two words: quality and convenience.
Let’s talk about quality first. If we asked Midjourney version 1, just a bit more than a
year ago for a scene with desert dunes, and camels in front of The Great Sphinx of Giza,
we got something like this. Or this. But, when asking version 5 to create the same,
we get this. Now that is an incredible improvement in just one year. However, in the prompt, we also
asked for a highly-stylized result, and it seems to have ignored that. Also, these images have
some artifacting, and the camels feel a little copy-pasty. Hmm, yes. It’s almost as if just one
or two camel types were copied over many times. No matter, because version 5.2 is already out,
and it fixed that that too. And the results are breathtaking, stylized results. Loving it.
And when asking for a high-contrast surreal collage, with version 5,
we got something like this. While version 5.2 is a little more imaginative. I like this one a great
deal better. Now, as a counterexample, when asking for vibrant california poppies, the results are a
toss up. These could easily pass for two images from the same model. And both are excellent.
So this was about quality, and Midjourney has a great deal to offer when it comes to
convenience. For instance, whenever we create an image, and we are happy with the result,
but not with the framing, we can now also ask it to zoom out. If we have an eye, we can say okay,
but whose eye is this? And there we go. Fantastic. And we can not only zoom, but we can also do some
panning. Little AI, tell me, what’s next to this creepy guy? Oh yes, of course, another creepy guy.
And there are a tons more convenience features in this,
for instance, it supports prompt weights. For instance, if we ask for a wooden teapot,
we can even put more emphasis on the wood part. And we get this. More like wood,
less like a teapot. And then even more. Note that the free Stable Diffusion can also do this.
It also supports one of my favorites for productivity: permutation prompts.
This is really underrated. If we are sure that we wish to get a painting of a bird,
but we are not quite sure which bird, we can add multiple birds in the same
prompt. This will give us all four bird types without having to create four prompts for it.
And for the first sight, this does not seem like a big thing, but this really is. Especially that
Midjourney supports multiple permutations, and even nested ones. With this, we can try out
tens of ideas with just one prompt. An incredible multiplier for your brain. I absolutely love this.
And finally, it can also help us shorten our prompts. What is that? Well, if we have tried
out way too many ideas and have a big bloated prompt, it can help us sort out what parts of this
actually matter. Then, it gives us 5 new prompts that are progressively shorter and shorter,
but all of them will try to retain the heart and soul of the original one.
So, these are some of the cooler features of Midjourney, there are so many of them,
for instance, we haven’t even talked about Remix mode, and more. So,
what do you think? Are you using Midjourney? Is it worth the money,
or is it free Stable Diffusion all the way for you? Let me know in the comments below!
Thanks for watching and for your generous support, and I'll see you next time!