[HN Gopher] Midjourney web experience is now open to everyone
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       Midjourney web experience is now open to everyone
        
       Author : meetpateltech
       Score  : 167 points
       Date   : 2024-08-21 17:11 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.midjourney.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.midjourney.com)
        
       | meetpateltech wrote:
       | > The Midjourney web experience is now open to everyone. We're
       | also temporarily turning on free trials to let you check it out.
       | Have fun!
       | 
       | https://x.com/midjourney/status/1826305298560418171
        
       | pizzathyme wrote:
       | This is a _interesting_ company to watch in the Gen AI space
       | since they don 't have all the same restrictions as the bigger
       | companies.
       | 
       | Crazy this took them so long, and also crazy that they got so far
       | through a very confusing Discord experience.
        
         | paxys wrote:
         | Crazier still that they have been able to achieve what they
         | have with zero external funding.
        
         | golergka wrote:
         | Using discord is a great way to focus on what's important and
         | get not great, but good enough ux and community tools basically
         | for free.
        
           | derefr wrote:
           | That and you get user observability for free, and support
           | injection in a way that to this day there's no good way to do
           | in an "app" experience.
           | 
           | Presuming your bot requires people to interact with it in
           | public channels, your CSRs can then just sit in those
           | channels watching people using the bot, and step in if
           | they're struggling. It's a far more impactful way to leverage
           | support staff than sticking a support interface on your
           | website and hoping people will reach out through it.
           | 
           | It's actually akin to the benefit of a physically-situated
           | product demo experience, e.g. the product tables at an Apple
           | Store.
           | 
           | And, also like an Apple Store, customers can also watch what
           | _one-another_ are doing /attempting, and so can both learn
           | from one another, and act as informal support for one-
           | another.
        
         | smusamashah wrote:
         | What do you mean by no restrictions? My account was flagged and
         | under review after using two bold prompts.
        
           | matsemann wrote:
           | The _company_ doesn 't have the same restrictions. They're
           | not talking about the ai model.
        
         | rambojohnson wrote:
         | what do you mean they don't have restrictions?
        
           | matsemann wrote:
           | Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc all have to shoehorn these
           | things into their products to stay on top, but it's not their
           | core business and they don't want it to take away from their
           | ads or licenses they sell. Midjourney as a company is much
           | freer to innovate without the burden of the restrictions of
           | an established company.
        
         | seatac76 wrote:
         | Try creating something mocking Xi Jinping.
        
           | thot_experiment wrote:
           | wait really? i'm not gonna sign up for midjourney but it's
           | surprising to me that this would be restricted
        
         | yas_hmaheshwari wrote:
         | Haha, that was the craziest part about signing on midjourney,
         | when you have to sign up via Discord
         | 
         | I don't use Discord on my office laptop, and that was very odd
         | experience
        
         | xwowsersx wrote:
         | What was the confusing Discord experience? Was it that Discord
         | was the main way to access Midjourney, and it was chaotic? I
         | vaguely remember this, but didn't spend much time there.
        
       | k8sToGo wrote:
       | Looks like I still need a discord or a google account and can't
       | just use regular email?
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | Yes, unfortunately. That's a no-go for me.
        
           | kxrm wrote:
           | I feel like this is an old man yells at cloud moment but I
           | refuse to link social media or google accounts with other
           | services.
           | 
           | Why should Google's or Discord's policy dictate my
           | participation in the web?
        
             | qclibre22 wrote:
             | So google will rank them higher in search results?
        
             | layer8 wrote:
             | They probably don't want to deal with email registration
             | workflows and want to limit themselves to OAuth, but that's
             | not user/customer-friendly.
        
             | mark242 wrote:
             | Because the alternative is pretty provably worse for you,
             | and for them.
             | 
             | * You have to save your (hopefully unique!) email/password
             | in a password manager which is effectively contradictory to
             | your "I won't use a cloud service" argument.
             | 
             | * The company needs to build out a whole email/password
             | authentication flow, including forgetting your password,
             | resetting your password, hints, rate limiting, etc etc, all
             | things that Google/Apple have entire dedicated engineering
             | teams tackling; alternatively, there are solid drop-in
             | OAuth libraries for every major language out there.
             | 
             | * Most people do not want to manage passwords and so take
             | the absolute lazy route of reusing their passwords across
             | all kinds of services. This winds up with breached accounts
             | because Joe Smith decided to use his LinkedIn
             | email/password on Midjourney.
             | 
             | * People have multiple email addresses and as a result wind
             | up forgetting which email address/password they used for a
             | given site.
             | 
             | Auth is the number one customer service problem on almost
             | any service out there. When you look at the sheer number of
             | tickets, auth failures and handholding always dominate time
             | spent helping customers, and it isn't close. If Midjourney
             | alienates 1 potential customer out of 100, but the other 99
             | have an easier sign-in experience and don't have to worry
             | about any of the above, that is an absolute win.
        
               | mikae1 wrote:
               | _> People have multiple email addresses and as a result
               | wind up forgetting which email address /password they
               | used for a given site._
               | 
               | Effectively you mean that people have multiple Google
               | accounts?
        
               | kxrm wrote:
               | All very thoughtful arguments but I think this solution
               | to these problems is flawed. I don't believe we should be
               | solving authentication management problems by handing
               | over all authentication capabilities and responsibilities
               | to one or two mega companies.
               | 
               | Especially since those companies can wield this enormous
               | power by removing my access to this service because I may
               | or may not have violated a policy unrelated to this
               | service.
               | 
               | There has to be a better way.
        
               | skybrian wrote:
               | There is: passkeys and alternative password managers.
        
               | rurp wrote:
               | You make it sound untenable to support email/password
               | auth, but given that the vast majority of low tech and
               | high tech online services manage it just fine, I think
               | you might be exaggerating a bit. Since Midjourney is
               | already outsourcing their auth flow, they could just as
               | easily use a third party that supports the most common
               | form of account creation.
        
             | stuffoverflow wrote:
             | Why not just make another google account that you solely
             | use for registration in services like these? Use a virtual
             | machine with VPN if you really do not want it to be linked
             | with your real account.
             | 
             | It is a bit of extra work but that's just how it is
             | nowadays.
        
               | mdp2021 wrote:
               | Does not google require a telephone number to create
               | accounts nowadays? In some regions there are no anonymous
               | SIM cards by law. (Temporary number services may not work
               | well.)
        
               | KolmogorovComp wrote:
               | Midjourney is a paid-only service anyway, you would need
               | to enter your credit card, so no anonymity.
        
               | mdp2021 wrote:
               | There do exist anonymous credit cards, paid with cash,
               | for fixed relatively small amounts (e.g. ~100u. In Europe
               | there are restrictions to these kind of payment methods -
               | cards must be below, I believe, 150EUR).
        
               | layer8 wrote:
               | The issue is you have to disclose your phone number to
               | Google, not (just) to Midjourney, AND Google will know
               | you use Midjourney.
               | 
               | There's too much unnecessary connected PII data generated
               | by such mechanisms.
        
               | kxrm wrote:
               | I am pretty sure that if any account I own at Google is
               | caught violating policy, all other accounts are subject
               | to being disabled.
        
               | nottorp wrote:
               | I think the only way to make a google account without a
               | phone number these days is to factory reset an android
               | phone and take the sim out beforehand.
               | 
               | If that even still works...
        
             | skybrian wrote:
             | Yeah, they should add Github support.
        
         | mrweasel wrote:
         | While I understand that they might need some account or token
         | to stop abuse, just having my sign in is a big no for anything
         | I just want to try out. After the whole social media trend more
         | or less collapsed into a privacy invading data collection
         | nightmare, I've been extremely reluctant to sign up for
         | anything.
        
           | ffsm8 wrote:
           | You honestly think giving full, no rate limited free access
           | is viable in the LLM space, where each execution is actually
           | pretty expensive?
           | 
           | Because that's what you're asking for, as it'd be trivial to
           | reset the rate without accounts.
        
       | Jack5500 wrote:
       | What the really need is user management, so big corps can adopt
       | it. Currently with the user self-service it's a no-go.
        
         | danielbln wrote:
         | For a company workshop I wanted to pay for Midjourney to invite
         | a bot into a private Discord with the workshop participants. We
         | couldn't find a way of using it as a company account, and
         | ultimately every participant had to get a sub, which was less
         | than ideal. If it was today I would have them use Flux in some
         | hosted version.
        
       | xnorswap wrote:
       | I have to say I'm very impressed. I've previously used free
       | generators for generating scenery for my D&D campaign, and
       | running a prompt here that previously took me dozens of tweaks to
       | get something reasonable, instantly returned me a set of high
       | quality images, at least one of which was much closer to my
       | mind's eye than anything in those dozens of previous attempts.
       | 
       | ( Prompting: An iron-gated door, set into a light stone arch, all
       | deep set into the side of a gentle hill, as if the entrance to a
       | forgotten crypt. The hill is lightly wooded, there is foliage in
       | season. It is early evening. --v 6.1 )
       | 
       | And result:
       | https://cdn.midjourney.com/5b56f713-3d64-471f-8c3c-08a0247e6...
       | 
       | The style matches exactly what I'd want too, it's captured
       | "Fantasy RP book illustration" extremely well, despite that not
       | being in the prompt!
        
         | skybrian wrote:
         | Midjourney's "house style" leans towards fantasy by default.
        
       | coumbaya wrote:
       | Flux, latest Midjourney, or even dall-e... I'm still disappointed
       | that 3 of my sci-fi prompts never works (interior of an O'Neill
       | Cylinder, Space elevator, rotating space station). I hope someone
       | makes lora of those one day.
        
         | xnorswap wrote:
         | What prompts are you using for the space station? I think it
         | pretty much nails it after some prompt tweaking.
         | 
         | First attempt:
         | 
         | https://cdn.midjourney.com/686f364f-188f-4065-813f-b45d21972...
         | 
         | Tweaking to specify spokes around the central axis:
         | 
         | https://cdn.midjourney.com/d18d3ad3-3fd0-461e-a3a8-5fc46f0ba...
        
           | iwontberude wrote:
           | Space Wagon Wheel
        
             | bonestamp2 wrote:
             | This makes me think the next generation needs an Oregon
             | Trail type game for space travel.
        
           | coumbaya wrote:
           | Ah thanks, seems it got better at this one then ! I've tried
           | the 2 other prompts with the latest but the space station I
           | had only tried in v5.
        
         | GaggiX wrote:
         | You can train your own lora online,
         | https://replicate.com/ostris/flux-dev-lora-trainer/train
         | 
         | I think this is the most popular one right now online for Flux.
        
       | deisteve wrote:
       | Haven't used Midjourney since Flux dropped
        
         | GaggiX wrote:
         | Flux seems to give the backgrounds even more detail and
         | coherence compared to MJ, it's a surprisingly (or maybe not
         | given its size) great model.
        
         | indigodaddy wrote:
         | where can we try/use? Is it just the obvious google result of
         | https://getimg.ai/models/flux ?
        
           | GaggiX wrote:
           | Their Github repo provides some links if you want to try it
           | online: https://github.com/black-forest-labs/flux
        
           | nullandvoid wrote:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYVucud3ptc has good coverage
           | of running locally and via web (https://fal.ai/models)
        
           | minimaxir wrote:
           | Replicate, although not fully free, has the bonus of outputs
           | from Flux (from their endpoints only) able to be used for
           | commercial purposes whereas that is normally only applicable
           | for Flux schnell:
           | 
           | https://replicate.com/black-forest-labs/flux-dev
           | 
           | https://replicate.com/black-forest-labs/flux-schnell
        
           | mgiannopoulos wrote:
           | Grok on Twitter Premium has Flux integrated.
        
         | resource_waste wrote:
         | MJ has always been this pixar-style-hyperfit SD variant. It
         | almost seemed to just repeat google images but with gloss.
         | 
         | Or at least a year ago it was like that.
        
           | mdp2021 wrote:
           | For a period I daily checked its best outputs page: the
           | "pixar" style was frequent, but far from being the only one.
           | "Typical" like 10 is the type (mode) in
           | 10+9+9+8+8+7+7+6+6+5+5+4+4+3+3+2+2+1+1 - but still 10% of the
           | whole and just one possibility of all.
           | 
           | Midlibrary.io recognizes 5500 styles Midjourney knows.
        
       | weinzierl wrote:
       | In iOS Safari I get                   Unable to process request
       | due to missing initial state. This may happen if browser
       | sessionStorage is inaccessible or accidentally cleared. Some
       | specific scenarios are - 1) Using IDP-Initiated SAML SSO. 2)
       | Using signInWithRedirect in a storage-partitioned browser
       | environment.
       | 
       | EDIT: I tried again from scratch in a new tab and this time it
       | worked. So, temporary hiccup.
       | 
       | EDIT2: I have all the images I created on Discord in the web app
       | - very nice!
        
       | SoftMachine wrote:
       | Open to everyone, but you must have Google or Discord account.
       | Has the definition of everyone changed?
        
         | chipgap98 wrote:
         | Anyone can sign up for one of those accounts. I don't really
         | see why that would make this misleading
        
         | handfuloflight wrote:
         | Can everyone have a Google is Discord account?
        
       | mintplant wrote:
       | The splash screen locked up my fairly-recent Android phone. Like,
       | I had to hard-reboot.
        
       | weinzierl wrote:
       | I only see a form field for _/ imagine_. How can I _/ describe_?
       | 
       | The docs say to hover over the uploaded image or use the test
       | tube icon from the sidebar, neither of which seem to be available
       | on mobile.
        
         | skar3 wrote:
         | I nave the same problem
        
       | smusamashah wrote:
       | Ideogram 2.0 was also released today, and it's nerfed (anatomy is
       | lot worse than 1.0 now) just like StableDiffusion versions after
       | 1.5 which is very disappointing.
       | 
       | Well good thing we have Flux out in the open now, both midjourney
       | releasing web version or ideogram releasing there 2.0 on the same
       | day after 2 weeks of flux won't redeem them as much. Flux Dev is
       | amazing, check what SD community is doing with it on
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/ . It can do fine
       | tuning, there are Loras now, even control net. It can gen casual
       | photos like no other tool out there, you won't be able to tell
       | they are AI without looking way too deep.
        
         | arizen wrote:
         | Are there any publicly accessible Flux image generation
         | services you may recommend to check out?
        
           | smusamashah wrote:
           | There are a few.
           | 
           | https://fastflux.ai/ for instant image gen using Schnell (but
           | its fixed on 4 steps and is mainly a tech show off of
           | inference engine by runware.ai)
           | 
           | https://www.segmind.com/ has API support with lots of
           | options, I am using it to generate and set wallpaper using an
           | AHK script. It's very very slow though.
           | 
           | https://replicate.com/black-forest-labs/flux-
           | schnell/example...
           | 
           | https://huggingface.co/spaces/black-forest-
           | labs/FLUX.1-schne...
           | 
           | https://getimg.ai/text-to-image
           | 
           | There are other tools now if you Google 'Flux image generator
           | online'
        
           | stuffoverflow wrote:
           | Huggingface has quite a few spaces with the base dev model as
           | well as different variations of it.
           | 
           | https://huggingface.co/spaces?sort=trending&search=dev
        
           | e98cuenc wrote:
           | Check out https://www.freepik.com/pikaso you can try flux and
           | flux realism
        
           | zone411 wrote:
           | 90%+ of Flux image generations will be done through Grok.
        
           | LeoPanthera wrote:
           | If you have a suitably powerful M-Mac or iOS device, you can
           | run it locally using "Draw Things", which is free.
        
             | ProfessorLayton wrote:
             | Whoa, thanks for the tip!
        
             | evilduck wrote:
             | Just to clarify for other readers, Draw Things has support
             | and provides download links to quants but no iOS device can
             | run the full precision model which means you will get
             | slightly different and usually lower quality output than
             | stuff you may see elsewhere, even if you use the same
             | settings. It's still damn impressive though.
        
           | Dwedit wrote:
           | Twitter's image generator is the pro version of Flux.
        
       | jrm4 wrote:
       | Yes, I'm finding the "meh" here is expandable to most of the
       | companies, and that's a great thing (e.g just got a $500 card and
       | OpenHermes feels comparable to anything and it's running fully
       | locally) I know there's often not a lot to be optimistic about,
       | but the fact that so called "AI" is absolutely de-facto free/open
       | source is perhaps just about the best way this stuff could roll
       | out.
        
       | sylware wrote:
       | "Midjourney web experience is now open to everyone"...
       | 
       | "Enable JavaScript and cookies to continue"...
        
       | bloqs wrote:
       | I can hear the 'coomers' posting with glee
        
         | MrNeon wrote:
         | MJ coomers? The same MJ that bans accounts for coomer content?
         | 
         | Not sure that will change just because of a new frontend.
        
       | tschellenbach wrote:
       | I've been using it for a while and it's amazing :)
        
       | jiggawatts wrote:
       | It's just astonishing to me how difficult it still seems to be
       | for the Midjourney team to develop a web site that amounts to
       | little more than a textbox, a button, and an img tag.
       | 
       | I tried their new web experience, and... it's just broken. It
       | doesn't work. There's a showcase of other people's work, and
       | that's it. I can't click the text-box, it's greyed out. It says
       | "subscribe to start creating", but there's is _no "subscribe"
       | button!_
       | 
       | Mindblowing.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | There's a theory that Midjourney didn't want to pay for image
         | hosting (which they were getting for free from Discord).
        
           | GaggiX wrote:
           | Images has been available on their website for quite some
           | time.
        
       | cma wrote:
       | Seems to be a direct response to Black Forest Labs' Flux being
       | offered on Twitter with a lot of uptake.
        
       | kgraves wrote:
       | I'm so glad that Midjourney and Flux is making creativity
       | accessible to everyone, I don't need to have a subscription to MJ
       | anymore now that Flux is getting better.
       | 
       | Everybody can now be an artist and have creativity for free now.
       | 
       | What a time to be alive.
        
       | quesomaster9000 wrote:
       | And it still can't draw a spork yet [1]
       | 
       | 1: https://canaidrawasporkyet.org/
        
         | BryanLegend wrote:
         | I don't see midjourney on that site.
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-21 23:00 UTC)