I was humbled to learn that my art was published on the cover of Midjourney Magazine, Issue 12, published in January 2024.
The most recent statistics were released a year ago, but extrapolating from that, somewhere between 50 to 250 million images are generated with Midjourney every month. The community rates these, and the editors go through the highest rated 10,000 images to select and publish a few hundred in that month’s issue. It’s a profound honor to be on the cover.
AI art is of course a complex and controversial subject. AI technology is rapidly changing our lives at a scale and speed rivaling that of the transformation caused by the Internet. Naturally, we are forced to process and deal with new ethical and societal issues. There are merits in arguments both for and against it in my opinion. I had never commissioned art before using Midjourney, yet I purchased 4 commissions in the last year; partially to support artists against the onslaught of AI, but also partially because playing with AI can help you figure out what kind of art you want and motivate you to seek an artist to render this vision.
I personally believe that AI’s ultimate impact in creative fields will be much bigger as a collaborator rather than a sole creator. Development of these creative tools augment humans’ capabilities rather than replace them, and will ultimately have a positive impact on culture. The road, however, is and will continue to be quite bumpy.
