For the longest time, it was thought that creative art could never be produced by machines. Recently, however, that seems to have changed. At the Colorado State Fair’s 2022 art competition, an art piece generated by Midjourney — an artificial intelligence programme that turns text prompts into art — took home first place. Unsurprisingly, this led to strong backlash from artists, who protested against the win. How could a painting generated by an A.I. beat evocative pieces lovingly crafted by human hands? With the artist community in chaos, Midjourney CEO David Holz had to step up and tell the world he never meant for Midjourney to be a threat.
Holz always had an interest in new technology. He started his PhD in fluid mechanics before moving to San Francisco, where he co-founded a company that developed 3D motion-controlled devices. In 2022, he and his company took the next big leap: creating Midjourney. “We’re trying to expand the imaginative powers of the human species,” he said in an interview with Forbes. To generate images, users simply typed prompts into the Midjourney server on social messaging platform Discord. Midjourney would then produce four AI-generated images, which users could choose to improve on and finetune.
Midjourney immediately caused a stir. Artists felt threatened. After all, Midjourney seemed to be taking their place — it was a cheaper, more efficient creator of art. In addition, it was trained, rather unethically, to generate images off artists’ original work without their consent or copyright. Thousands took to social media to vent their frustrations. “The 11 fine folks at Midjourney are stealing copyrighted works,” artist and Twitter user @kirkiscool commented sarcastically; personal anecdotes about Midjourney taking jobs from artists also emerged, with user @nickgraynews commenting, “[my friend is] using Midjourney to replace most of her freelance graphic designers”.
In the face of these challenges, Holz remained unfazed. In interviews, he maintains that Midjourney was never made to compete with professional artists. Rather, he designed it to unlock the creativity of the ordinary folk by giving them a way to create art, just by describing them. “My stuff is made for people who…don’t ever get to [create art],” he says. Further, he believes that such technology can create a much deeper appreciation for visual arts. This would increase the demand for artistic diversity and quality — which only professional artists can provide. As for the issue of consent and copyright, Holz assures that he is looking into allowing artists to opt out of having their work used.
Ultimately, Holz sees Midjourney as a tool not for art, but for imagination. “Imagination is sometimes used for art but it’s often not,” he says, stating that many of the images created on Midjourney were not even being shared, but rather used to satisfy the “human need” of creative curiosity. That, to Holz, is the true purpose of his creation. “We want the world to be more imaginative.”
There is no doubt that Midjourney is a game-changer, especially for people who wish to stretch the boundaries of their imagination and try their hand at creating beautiful art. But it is true that the subject is tricky. The artists that Midjourney has stolen inspiration from, and the ones whom it is likely to replace, have every right to be upset. Perhaps the only conclusion is that the introduction of Midjourney into artist-dominated spaces, like so many other things, is still a work in progress, one that will hopefully be able to find a happy middle that still allows people to create.
Sources: Forbes, New York Times, The Verge