/imagine

A quick post to share some ideas on getting going in prompting, using MidJourney as an example. Prompting is a new literacy, and already prompt engineering is becoming a sought-after skill.

The slides below give a quick overview on how to get started in MidJourney image generator, using prompts and parameters to get closer to what you imagine. The principles will transfer well enough to other tools; if you try them, you’ll get to know how different models are working.

Update [March 16, 2023]: MidJourneyV5 is live. Higher quality, but needs more detailed prompts. Use “–v 5” in the prompt.

The possibilities are endless, and there is a lot to learn. Click here to go full-screen.

Some quick & useful links:

• Midjourney Home
• Midjourney Quick Start Guide
• Midjourney Guides to Prompts and Parameters
• Midjourney Galleries
• Learn Prompting: Free online course for prompting in different tools
• An advanced guide to writing prompts for MidJourney

Some alternatives to MidJourney:

• PlaygroundAI has a StableDiffusion 1.5 & 2.1, and is free with login. DALL-E 2 is included, but needs a paid subscription.
• Microsoft Designer has DALL-E 2, with waitlist.
• Adobe Firefly has announced a waitlist (March 21, 2023), and is trained on commercially-safe images, with a commitment to reducing bias.

The Ethics of AI Image Generation

The emergence of these tools has generated controversy and legal cases related to the use of artists’ works to train diffusion models for image generation. As you learn these skills, take some time to consider the ethics of these models, and how you can model ethical use in AI tools.

• Forbes: AI is coming for art jobs. Can it be stopped?
• Upworthy: Ethics of AI “art” apps and impacts on creators.
• TechCrunch: The current legal cases against AI art are just the beginning.
• HuggingFace Space to try: Average Human Faces demonstration of bias in generation.
• For more about Ethics & Integrity in AI: learn.wab.edu/innovation/ai/ethics

Learning From Others

There are lots of great creators on Twitter sharing their prompts and experiments, usually with the prompts in alt-text of images.

People who share their prompts
in our A.I. community (Part 1): @nickfloats @javilopen @HBCoop_ @juliewdesign_ @_AtelierSG_

Know someone who shares cool prompts, tell me. Also if a prompt inspired you, please, tag someone you saw it first. Let's be supportive and kind.

— Kris Kashtanova (@icreatelife) March 22, 2023

I learned a new term from @PipCleaves: Knolling. I don’t know why, but it is so aesthetically pleasing.

Nothing like spending a Sunday evening learning new Knolling prompts in MidJourney. I’m really loving beating able to things that my mind sees but my hand cannot draw. pic.twitter.com/qNDnoAhbRk

— Pip Cleaves (@pipcleaves) February 12, 2023