What happened: The AI image-generation tool Midjourney has been a recurring name in viral social media posts, credited for artwork reimagining U.S. presidents with mullets or as Pixar characters. Growing interest in the product, which serves users through prompt-and-response interactions on a Discord server, can be seen in its monthly website visits, which grew from 18.6 million in November to 31.6 million in January, according to similarweb.
Why it matters: This growth preceded March events that stand to keep Midjourney in the news well into 2023. Version 5 of its text-to-image creator launched just as fake Midjourney-made photos of Donald Trump and Pope Francis renewed public debate over the use of AI to spread fake news stories. Still, Midjourney's site traffic lags far behind that of OpenAI, whose DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT products lifted their site to 1 billion visits in January. Where to see the impact: Midjourney ended free trials for new users Tuesday, reacting to what its CEO and founder David Holz called "extraordinary demand and trial abuse." That will likely impact casual use, but that may be good for the company if it can drive more paid use in the process. |
