Creating Illustrations with MidJourney and Discord
MidJourney launched in open beta in July 2022 from a San Francisco company with only 10 employees. The team built an AI-powered text-to-illustration tool that lets you build original, high-resolution images in a few seconds.
The tool is free but has paid upgrades, and you actually use the tool through a bot in Discord. You’ll need accounts on both and must connect MidJourney to Discord, which is easily prompted at set-up. I recommend setting up Discord first.
Using It Journalistically
A competitor to Open AI’s DALL-E and Stable Diffusion, MidJourney lets you create illustrations, memes, logos and other pieces of art quickly. I would recommend labeling them as such if you publish them and even explain to the reader how you made it (full transparency). In fact, I used MidJourney to design the header logo on the Journalist’s Toolbox AI Tools page.
Joe Amditis of the Center for Cooperative Media created an ebook to help publishers with the AI tool. Beginner’s Prompt Handbook: ChatGPT for Local News Publishers offers specific examples on how to write good prompts and unexpected use cases for newsrooms.
As with most tools, MidJourney can be used for fake news. This was the case with the hundreds of memes of Donald Trump “fleeing police” that made the rounds on social media prior to his late March indictment.
Be careful with this tool. It can be dangerous in the hands of those with bad intentions or those unprepared. Consult the SPJ and NPPA codes of ethics for advice on handling photo illustrations, and Santa Clara’s Makkula Center for Applied Ethics has an excellent guide on Ethical Questions About Generative AI. The US Copyright office ruled in late February that images created with the tool don’t fall under copyright jurisdiction. This could change over time, however.
Testing it Out
I’ve built a working document on AI tools on this Google Doc that you can view. I’ve updated it toward the bottom with background on MidJourney and some prompts, lenses and features to get you started.
I started with some basic prompts by telling MidJourney to /imagine A BMW sports car on a beach at sunset, ultra realistic —v 5 —ar 3:2
The last two prompts told it to use the most current “version 5” of MidJourney and that the aspect ratio should be 3:2 (horizontal, 2:3 for vertical iPhones). Other prompts let you add filters, lenses (which MidJourney is still figuring out) and more.
Here was the result:
It took about one minute to produce these images. By pressing a button underneath these samples, I could “upscale” each image for a higher resolution that I could then download and use.
I suggest using the MidJourney Prompt Book, which features a variety of tips and a database of prompts that you can use for more detail.
Working with my students, I’ve found that MidJourney helps them understand how to write descriptively … and then see results. I’ll continue to experiment with MidJourney and other AI tools, then share what I learn here. In the meantime, explore some tools on your own on the Toolbox’s AI for Journalists page.
Just for Fun
I tried this prompt just for kicks: /imagine A Mandalorian having a pint of beer at an Irish pub outdoors with a friend, ultra realistic, —v 5
And here you go:
And speaking of beer …
Buy me a beer: Hey, I work hard to find all of these tools for you! Click on the button to buy me a beer (or six). I’m thirsty!
Around the Web
Climate TRACE
Independent greenhouse gas emissions tracking. Explore the map and download the data.A great option for transcribing video and audio on MacOS & Windows. Just drag, drop, and you’re done. It’s a fast, accurate, and affordable fully-offline transcription app that’s a one-time purchase with no limits, and a money-back guarantee.
Data + Journalism Textbook
Samantha Sunne and I co-authored a textbook, “Data + Journalism” that’s available now on Routledge. (Order here). It’s an introductory- to intermediate-level guide to learning data storytelling from A to Z.
It features examples, interviews, links to tools and dozens of practical exercises to learn how to find, scrape, clean, visualize and write with data. We also explore ethics, transparency and basic math skills. We even offer a bonus chapter — Chapter 13 — on diversity and inclusion for free on our blog.
In Quotes …
“You have to go where the story is to report on it. As a journalist, you’re essentially running to things that other people are running away from.” — Lester Holt
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