Midjourney, a bootstrapped startup known for its popular text-to-image AI generator, has made waves in the tech community since its beta launch in the summer of 2022. With over 16 million users, including VentureBeat, Midjourney has built a thriving community on its official server within the messaging app Discord. However, the primary means of interaction with Midjourney has been through Discord, where users could type in text prompts to the Midjourney Bot and receive generated images to choose from.
Excitingly, Midjourney has now expanded its reach by partnering with engineers from Japanese game company Sizigi Studios to launch Niji Journey, an Android and iOS app. This move is aimed at catering to the Japanese market and providing images using Midjourney's anime art style setting, known as "Niji."
The Niji Journey app is available for download on both the Google Play and Apple App Stores for free, with in-app purchases. However, it still requires a paid subscription through Midjourney to access its features. Existing Midjourney subscribers can log into the app using their Discord credentials without any additional cost.
Why the Partnership with Sizigi Studios?
During Midjourney's regular weekly "Office Hours" audio conference held within Discord, founder David Holz explained why they chose to partner with Sizigi Studios. Holz, a former co-founder of Leap Motion and NASA researcher, stated that Japanese users are more accustomed to interacting with mobile apps than desktop software. Additionally, they found Midjourney's Discord Bot to be less user-friendly for the Japanese audience.
With the Niji Journey app, users can now generate non-Niji images as well, giving them access to the entire range of art styles available through the AI generator. This added flexibility allows users to select "v5" in the app's settings and explore different artistic possibilities.
The Future of Midjourney: A Full-Fledged Stand-Alone App
While Niji Journey is an exciting development, Holz emphasized that it is just the beginning. Midjourney plans to release its own stand-alone app in the future but did not provide a specific timeline. Holz acknowledged that mobile app economics currently do not typically support services as expensive as Midjourney. Therefore, the team is carefully considering how to create an onboarding experience for new users should they decide to launch a stand-alone mobile app.
In the meantime, Midjourney is committed to enhancing its services. Holz announced two major features set to be released soon: a native upscaler to increase image resolution and a personalized style setting for users to create their own styles for all image generations. These features are still experimental but will be released soon, despite not meeting the team's high standards. Additionally, Midjourney plans to upgrade its website in two phases, providing more viewing and sharing options for generated images.
The Challenges Ahead for Midjourney
Midjourney has gained a substantial following due to the high quality and interesting imagery its AI generator produces. However, it faces increasing competition from other high-quality image-generating AI alternatives, such as OpenAI's DALL-E 3 and Adobe's Firefly Image 2. Additionally, competitors like Ideogram offer typography generation that surpasses Midjourney's capabilities.
The launch of the Niji Journey mobile app is a crucial step for Midjourney to stay competitive in this evolving landscape. The pressure from well-funded and more user-friendly alternatives poses a challenge for Midjourney's stagger-step approach to releasing new user-facing products and services. Nevertheless, Midjourney's impressive userbase and commitment to innovation suggest that it has the potential to remain a key player in the text-to-image AI generation space.
Tags: Midjourney, Niji Journey, text-to-image AI generator, mobile app, Discord, Sizigi Studios, anime art style, user-friendly, image generation, competition
