Bringing my Midjourney Subscription to a close
My introduction to AI Art was through MidJourney, and while I've generated a rather large number of images through it (and I have many, many, more to share!) - I will not be renewing my subscription for a number of reasons, which I'll outline in this post.
The first of these reasons is creative limitations which are at the whims of the developers of the MidJourney platform. While the platform is quick, convenient, and stunning in terms of the ways in which it can get me to learn more about my ideation process; sometimes there are concepts that I want to explore which MidJourney might just deem to be something that should be censored.
There's no appeal process around this, just rules is rules.
Sure, there's ways to get around this using a thesaurus, but there's a risk of violating the ToS, and seeing your subscription spill down the drain anyway.
The second reason is that of cost. With mortgage interest rates increasing, and electricity, food, and all sorts of other things increasing in price as well; it means that what little "leisure" money I have to use goes to finding ways to either "own things", or "invest for the future"; both of which I can see the MidJourney subscription fee being redirected toward.
In fact, I have already completed this, particularly if you read my posts on a regular basis You'll see that I have upgraded to a 4090, which brings me to my next point - Stable Diffusion.
Being able to run a model locally, and not have to share cloud GPU resources means that I can have a dedicated workstation and time and space to generate and work on the images I want, free from the external bias that is imposed upon a model, limiting creative freedom.
With the 4090, I can now, should I choose to do so, train my own models and produce work that is far more esoteric or complex than anything that I could possibly convince MidJourney to conduct through interesting use of the English language.
So that means a few things.
- You are going to see a lot of MidJourney stuff that I will rework using a combination of Photoshop, Stable Diffusion, and other digital art making techniques
- My work might be about to get a bit more bizzare than what it already may seem
- There's a lot of procedual generation ideas that I want to play with, linked back to my reasons for wanting to learn how to do Python bits and pieces
- My rambling is possibly about to become even more technical than what it was in the past.
Mid Journey is a great tool to bring AI art to the masses, but Stable Diffusion and its related models are where the nerds go to tinker. I'm a nerd. I'm going there. I hope to see you there some times. If not, who knows, you may find yourself the victim of a generative portrait.
For the time being, enjoy some of my favourite images I've generated using MidJourney.
Want more content from me?
Witness my futile efforts to play my Steam Game collection in alphabetical order.
Are you aware that I love photography? Check out my work in a collection.
If you want to see my Splinterlands antics and rants live, Find me on Twitch
If you prefer sleeping in your designated time zone, go watch replays on YouTube.
Excellent images. It's impossible to tell they are AI generated.
I've looked at a lot of AI art over the last few months. There are certain tells, the eyes, the hands, and a few other things - but it is getting better and better everyday.
I will continue to read your article, which is full of meaning and there are beautiful pictures that are my interest, good luck.
Thank you very much for doing that!
I don't follow the technicals well, but that's okay. Just glad to be along for the ride :)
I still love what you're doing with Midjourney! I understand from your standpoint, for me I don't mind paying the sub because it's a gain of time, I just can't spend hours generating pics using my PC as I have to do other things with it too, work-related!
But you're absolutely right, you can totally have better results with Stable Diffusion, and there's even more candidates that are emerging on the market; like the google one in beta (forgot the name).
I look forward to see more!!
I understand why it is recurring billing, but I can't justify that on my home budget's bottom line. :D