Midjourney opens public beta on Discord
In one sentence Midjourney opens its public beta with a text-to-image model accessible via a Discord bot. Its strong aesthetic default and community turn image generation into a mass phenomenon.
Midjourney is a small startup led by David Holz (ex Leap Motion). In July 2022 it opens its public beta, but with a strange choice: no website, a bot inside Discord. You type /imagine followed by a sentence and the bot replies with four images.
Unlike DALL-E 2 the images have a recognizable aesthetic right away: painterly, cinematic, often beautiful without effort. This "pretty default" wins over artists, designers, and thousands of curious users.
In a few weeks the Midjourney Discord server becomes one of the largest in the world. It will even win an art competition at the Colorado State Fair (with controversy). Generative AI enters pop culture.
Companies
Midjourney
Tools
Midjourney
Tags
Sources