AI Image Generator Midjourney Pauses Free Trials Amid Huge Demand, Abuse
AI image generator Midjourney has paused free trials, citing "extraordinary demand and trial abuse." They will remain unavailable "until we have our next improvements to the system deployed," CEO David Holz posted on the Midjourney Discord channel(Opens in a new window).
The decision comes after several weeks of online fervor over shockingly realistic, controversial renderings that were created on the platform and circulated on the web. But Holz tells The Verge(Opens in a new window) the free-trial suspension is due to new users overloading the system, not a bid to crack down on fake image creation.
Midjourney, a San Francisco-based company with just 11 employees, is a self-funded company committed to "exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species," according to its website(Opens in a new window). Those expanded imaginations have churned out faux paparazzi photos of Elon Musk holding hands with US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and GM CEO Mary Barra, chaotic scenes of former President Trump "being arrested," and Pope Francis wearing his swaggiest outfit(Opens in a new window) yet—or partying(Opens in a new window) at Burning Man.
With a free trial, users can only generate a limited amount of pictures, around 25 The Verge estimates, or 0.4 GPU hours "per lifetime" according to Midjourney's plan overview(Opens in a new window). GPU hours do not directly correlate to standard time hours, and they are more an indicator of compute time. More computationally intense images, for example, may eat up more of a user's allotment.
"We tried turning trials back on again with new safeties for abuse but they didn't seem to be sufficient so we are turning it back off again to maintain the
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