Last week, I saw a tweet from Brielle Garcia1 about a new AI art visualization tool called MidJourney. I’ve messed around a bit with AI-generated art in the past, but MidJourney is just… well, I want to show you. First, here’s the thread that caught my attention:
So I applied to be a part of the tool’s beta. Within a few days, I had access of my own, and it’s changed how I think about artificial intelligence. I’m absolutely fascinated by the concept, blown away by the current ability to churn out virtually anything you can imagine in seconds, and honestly a little worried about what happens when this technology takes the next leap.2
(Also, if you’re reading this in your email, it’s almost certainly going to clip a big portion of the bottom, so it might be best to open this newsletter in a browser.)
Paid subscribers, please feel free to drop some requests in the comments below. I’ll try to make a few of them for a future paid-subscriber-only newsletter edition.
And if you’re not yet a paid subscriber, there are still 2 days left to sign up for a free 90-day subscription on all annual plans:
On to the artwork:
One of my first inputs was “Chicago skyline by Andy Warhol.” It brought back some absolutely stunning stuff looking like this:
Wow. Okay, what next… Okay, how about a “photorealistic picture of World War III:”
That’s… certainly more realistic than I thought it’d be. Not quite enough to fool someone into thinking it’s real, but you can definitely see the potential here. Anyway, a little sillier: “Bart Simpson by Pablo Picasso”
Nailed it. Okay, but “what if Wes Anderson made The Matrix?”
For this one, I just put in the emoji for dog, city night, and rainbow. Here’s what I got:
What if “Walt Disney created a baby ghost character?”
How about “the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a friendly cartoon character?”
Or some abstract “Spider-Man-themed silkscreen” ideas?
Show me “the singularity:”
Okay, now do an interdimensional portal:
The Shakespeare line, “Hell is empty and all the devils are here:”
Or “Phoebe Bridgers as a Byzantine icon:”
Let’s try something goofy but specific… “Dinosaur astronauts in the style of a 1957 Soviet poster”
Something darker, but more realistic: “Children watch as a nuclear warhead explodes in the distance”
Or… “photographic evidence that ghosts are real?”
Or “fossils of extraterrestrials found on Earth:”
How about “a cat wearing a mech suit in the style of Shaun Tan:”
“Mitch McConnell as a Confederate general:”
“Phoebe Bridgers as a Byzantine icon:”
“A portrait of Joe Biden by Grant Wood:”
“The ‘This is fine’ dog as painted by Sandro Botticelli":”
“Elon Musk with lobster claws for hands:”
“Logos for Minor League Baseball teams:”
“Chicago as paper art:”
“The United States of America by Andy Warhol:”
And finally, “Cartoon duck holding a baseball bat:”
You may know her work from Nick Lutsko’s “Spirit Halloween Planet” video.
I work and conduct academic research in this area of artificial intelligence, and honestly it absolutely blows my mind.
if they haven't given me access by now, they probably won't ;o; i have so many stupid and embarrassing ideas!
if you wanna, do elon musk as a furry or a specific furry, like a femboy fox. lol
this is so cool, and the alien skeleton ones were creepy as shit!