Midjourney, the Generative AI platform you can presently use on Discord simply launched the idea of reusable characters and I’m blown away.
It is a easy concept: As a substitute of utilizing prompts to create numerous generative picture variations, you create and reuse a central character as an instance all of your themes, stay out your wildest fantasies, and perhaps inform a narrative.
Up till lately, Midjourney, which is educated on a diffusion mannequin (add noise to an authentic picture and have the mannequin de-noise it so it could possibly be taught concerning the picture) might create some lovely and astonishingly reasonable photos primarily based on prompts you set within the Discord channel (“/think about: [prompt]”) however until you had been asking it to change considered one of its generated photos, each picture set and character would look completely different.
Now, Midjourney has cooked up a easy option to reuse your Midjourney AI characters. I attempted it out and, for essentially the most half, it really works.
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In a single immediate, I described somebody who seemed a bit of like me, selected my favourite of Midjourney’s 4 generated picture choices, upscaled it for extra definition, after which, utilizing a brand new “– cref” immediate and the URL for my generated picture (with the character I preferred), I pressured Midjounrey to generate new photos however with the identical AI character in them.
Later, I described a personality with Charles Schulz’s Peanuts character qualities and, as soon as I had one I preferred, reused him in a special immediate situation the place he had his kite caught in a tree (Midjourney could not or would not put the kite within the tree branches).
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It is from good. Midjourney nonetheless tends to over-adjust the artwork however I contend the characters within the new photos are the identical ones I created in my preliminary photos. The extra descriptive you make your preliminary character-creation prompts, the higher consequence you will get in subsequent photos.
Maybe essentially the most startling factor about Midjourney’s replace is the utter simplicity of the artistic course of. Writing pure language prompts has all the time been straightforward however coaching the system to make your character do one thing would possibly sometimes take some programming and even AI mannequin experience. Right here it is only a easy immediate, one code, and a picture reference.
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Whereas it is simpler to take considered one of Midjourney’s personal creations and use that as your foundational character, I made a decision to see what Midjourney would do if I turned myself into a personality utilizing the identical “cref” immediate. I discovered a web based picture of myself and entered this immediate: “think about: making a pizza – cref [link to a photo of me]”.
Midjourney rapidly spit out an interpretation of me making a pizza. At greatest, it is the essence of me. I chosen the least objectionable one after which crafted a brand new immediate utilizing the URL from my favourite me.
Sadly, after I entered this immediate: “interviewing Tim Cook at Apple headquarters”, I bought a grizzled-looking Apple CEO consuming pizza and one other picture the place he is holding an iPad that appears prefer it has pizza for a display.
After I eliminated “Tim Prepare dinner” from the immediate, Midjourney was in a position to drop my character into 4 photos. In every, Midjourney Me seems to be barely completely different. There was one, although, the place it seemed like my favourite me having fun with a pizza with a “CEO” who additionally seemed like me.
Midjourney’s AI will enhance and shortly it is going to be straightforward to create numerous photos that includes your favourite character. It could possibly be for comedian strips, books, graphic novels, picture collection, animations, and, finally, generative movies.
Such a instrument might velocity storyboarding but additionally make character animators very nervous.
If it is any comfort, I am undecided Midjourney understands the distinction between me and a pizza and pizza and an iPad – a minimum of not but.
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