Midjourney’s AI image editing reimagines your uploaded photos

Midjourney released its External Editor connected Thursday, “a powerful caller instrumentality for unleashing your imagination.” Available to prime users, nan AI instrumentality will alteration users to upload their ain images, past adjust, modify and retexture them successful a wide assortment of creator styles.

Previously, users could upload a reference image to Midjourney, either done nan alpha web app aliases its discord server, past person nan procreation exemplary usage that arsenic a reference to create a caller image. You could not, however, make immoderate edits to nan root image itself. That’s changing pinch nan caller External Editor. With it, you’ll beryllium capable to add, modify, move, resize, remove, and reconstruct circumstantial assets wrong nan image, arsenic good arsenic reskin it arsenic a full successful an wholly caller style — shifting it from, say, a photograph to pointillism to impressionist to anime. The strategy reportedly useful connected doodles and statement drawings arsenic well.

The caller instrumentality is not rolling retired to everybody conscionable yet. “To support nan aforesaid moderation standards we’ve group crossed Midjourney,” nan institution wrote successful its announcement blog, it is only making it disposable to users who person subscribed to its work for a twelvemonth aliases more, aliases who person generated 10,000 aliases much images done nan Midjourney level — essentially, its astir loyal customers.

This argumentation will hopefully forestall a flood of copyright-infringing generations for illustration we saw pinch the merchandise of xAI’s Grok 2. Although, 1 user, Halim Alrasihi, has already went up to race-swap a exemplary successful an image utilizing nan External Editor, highlighting nan truth that it’s astir intolerable to power AI-generated imagery

You will also, of course, person to meet nan site’s property requirements, arsenic good arsenic “follow each applicable laws, our Community Guidelines, and different policies.” The institution besides reserves nan correct to region contented astatine its discretion and warns that, “you will apt brushwood clash pinch our moderation — seemingly guiltless prompts whitethorn beryllium blocked by our filters.”

Midjourney laminitis David Holz besides noted successful a connection on nan company’s Discord server that “all of these things are very new, and we want to springiness nan organization and quality moderation unit clip to easiness into it mildly …”

Users person already begun publishing their edited useful online, pinch examples that are arsenic awesome arsenic they are troubling. Dreaming Tulpa, for example, utilized it to retexture nan Mona Lisa successful various gothic styles —  that’s “gothic” arsenic successful Hot Topic promenade goth, not nan play of creator and architectural invention successful Europe lasting from nan 14th to nan 16th centuries.

new midjourney editing feature

yesterday was nan past time reality could beryllium discerned from fiction. one dream you made nan astir of it! pic.twitter.com/TtPjTn8zjD

— adjacent (@nearcyan) October 23, 2024

Another user, near, conversely, utilized it to switch a barroom pinch a stack of GPUs successful an image of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, bragging that, “yesterday was nan past time reality could beryllium discerned from fiction. one [sic] dream you made nan astir of it!” As to whether aliases not this extremely resource-heavy computation will consequence successful thing much than defacing classical artworks aliases generating memes is still yet to beryllium seen.

Granted, Midjourney isn’t nan only AI institution offering these sorts of services. Gemini, ChatGPT (via Dall-E), Grok, and Copilot tin each make and edit images successful a akin manner.