Midjourney Ends Free Trials, Citing Great ‘Demand’ & ‘Abuse’ As Images Go Viral
Welp. Artists who’ve been experimenting with the artificial intelligence generator Midjourney will no longer have access to the imaging tool at no cost, as founder David Holz has announced the end of free trials due to “extraordinary demand” and “abuse.”
“Due to a combination of extraordinary demand and trial abuse, we are temporarily disabling free trials until we have our next improvements to the system deployed,” Holz wrote on the company’s Discord channel.
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) March 20, 2023
Coincidentally or not, this announcement comes just days after a series of images created by the system sent the internet into a spiral. This first began last week when photorealistic images of former US president Donald Trump being arrested surfaced online.
As expected, the images went viral on social media, followed by a separate series of pictures in which Pope Francis was clad in a stylish puffer coat that similarly fooled the internet earlier this week, giving rise to questions about the dangers of AI-generated images.
Apparently doing a viral thread about Donald Trump using Midjourney images is enough to get you banned from Midjourney, oops.
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) March 22, 2023
According to PetaPixel, amidst the chaos online, there were instances of romance scammers using faked pictures to trick unsuspecting victims of large sums of money, such as an instance where one woman lost US$430,000 to such a scam.
Those looking to tap into Midjourney’s capabilities will now have to fork out for its monthly subscription, which ranges from US$10 to US$60. Could this be the turning point for the public to take concerns about AI more seriously?
This viral photo of the pope was actually generated by Midjourney.
— Peter Yang (@petergyang) March 26, 2023
Going to very hard to tell what’s real and what’s fake moving forward. pic.twitter.com/f4vfNR4XcA
Midjourney has temporarily disabled free trials due to both extraordinary demand and trial abuse.
— Emmanuelle Saliba (@_esaliba) March 29, 2023
This is the AI image generator used to create those fabricated images of former President Trump and Pope Francis.
Admin announced the update via Discord. pic.twitter.com/NMKKA7Bv1k
[via PetaPixel and BGR, cover image via Artiemedvedev | Dreamstime.com]
