You may have noticed that for some time now, my articles have been illustrated with paintings and that I have not posted any artist links in source. The simple reason is that they are mine. Finally from me with a little help, that of an AI: Midjourney.
Midjouney is an AI that creates paintings from a sequence of words that you give it.
Here are some examples:
To use it is very simple, just go to this address:
https://www.midjourney.com/home
Sign up with a discord account (a chat program) and start giving him instructions. There is a free demo and 2 subscription models to not be limited in the number of images generated.
He ends up generating 4 images, from there you can ask him to start over, to launch variants of an image he gave you so that he comes up with 4 others approaching it or upscale one of the results.
I used it recently to illustrate my articles. It is an interesting tool for me because even if I like to draw and paint, the time that I will spend making the illustrations would be time that I will not spend writing.
Until then I used google images but these are not necessarily copyright free and above all they are not original which is important to me.
The other solution could have been to go through an outside artist but this has a cost that unfortunately I cannot afford, especially when trying to post one article to you per week.
Hey, but Nilsa, are the artists going to disappear?
The answer is no, for several reasons:
- The sequence of words that we use is of paramount importance to generate the images and depending on what we choose, the result can be very different. Then we choose an image among 4 that we choose to modify or not from the AI. Those are already artistic choices.
- The images generated sometimes have bugs and would often need to be retouched so that they are less shocking to the eye.
- Finally I think it can be a great tool for all designers / painters. Midjourney is a great way to get inspired and I think the images generated will mainly serve as a base for repainting over them as we already do with photos in what is called photobashing .
There are no copyright issues: is such a creation the property of the artist?
That’s a delicate subject. Not being a lawyer specializing in intellectual property, I would not be able to say who owns the image generated by code which is the intellectual property of the developers. Is it their property or is the AI considered a mere tool and thus the ownership of the work produced belongs to the user of the AI?
I do not know enough about the law to be able to decide on the question but this one is very interesting. It would be necessary to search the CGU of Midjourney and I admit to you that I was a little lazy.
After when the artist repaints over the generated image, he appropriates the image and creates his own work and in this case the final rendering becomes his property.
As in photobashing, if you have repainted and modified the image enough so that we do not recognize the original photo used then there are no copyright concerns.
I am not sponsored for this article if I tell you about it it’s just that I find this tool really magical.
I know it’s different from what I usually do, but I hope you enjoyed this article.
Take care of yourself and your loved ones and see you soon.
Nilsa's world 