Jordan [00:00:16]:
Can you create beautiful imagery, with only text in a couple of seconds? The answer is yes, with a little bit of practice and with some tips from our guests today on everyday AI. Before we get into that, and we're gonna dive into Midjourney and how to get the most out of this text to image generating powerhouse.
Before we do that, let me tell you you are listening to Everyday AI. We are a daily livestream podcast and free newsletter helping everyday people like you and me not just understand and and keep up with what's going on in the world of AI how we can actually use it in our day to day lives. So as a reminder, if you are joining us live, please. This is an interactive show. Drop a comment especially if you wanna know more about Midjourney.
Daily AI news
But before we do that, let's talk about what's going on in the world of AI news. Some pretty big developments today. So let's quickly talk about them. So the 2024 presidential races in the US here has officially been dubbed the AI election. So there's a report that we're sharing about today in the newsletter just talking about how in-depth, you know, the political parties are going in the US using AI in the election and in their political campaigns, the article is talking about how in-depth it goes, and it's it's wild.
The second news piece to talk about today is Google's new AI strategy is actually tapping into gaming. So an article in PC gamer today was talking about Google's kind of plan to beat or catch up with ChatGPT, and a lot of it has to go kind of old school with their gaming strategy. So more about that in the newsletter.
Speaking of people trying to catch ChatGPT, So China's Baidu, their new AI bot, it's called Ernie Bot, and kind of a new story came out today with some findings saying that they're passing ChatGPT on some metrics already. So if you wanna know if Baidu's Ernie Bot is going to catch ChatGPT, and we have a lot of other news. Make sure that you go to your everyday AI.com. and sign up for our free daily newsletter. So that's right. Not just a livestream, not just a podcast, free daily newsletter, but that's not what you're here for.
You're probably here to learn about Midjourney. So let's talk about that. So I'm gonna bring on my guest today. So Joining the Everyday AI live show today, we have David Barona, who is the founder of prompter mag. David, thank you for joining.
David [00:02:54]:
Jordan, thank you, sir. I appreciate it, man. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Jordan [00:02:58]:
Alright. Cool. We already have some people hanging out in the comments. professor Mohammed Lillian, they're they're excited. Let's go. Yes. Let's go. So, David, just tell us a little bit what isprompter mag, and How did you get into this this whole Midjourney thing?
About David and Prompter Mag
David [00:03:15]:
How did I get well, I first of all, Proctor Mag is my publication that I've really dedicated to learning and teaching along the way how to use this platform and really how to get the most out of it. Honestly, I like making assets that I can use. I'm a graphic designer by trade, and I'm in sales. I make presentations. I I have to use graphic assets all the time.
So I really tried to develop a way that I could use Midjourney to do it because, obviously, I can make them in about 5 seconds. studio quality, incredible stuff, and getting better with every version. And I it was for my own as my own tool. You know? really wanted to make assets that I could use and make money from. I I I love seeing the great results, but I also really wanted to monetize it. somehow. So that's where it was born, man. That that's where it comes from is is from me wanting to make beautiful stuff that I can use and not have to take a month to make something
Jordan [00:04:17]:
incredible. You know? Yeah. speaking speaking of things that are incredible. So if you're joining the livestream, your your eyes are gonna be blessed here. If you're listening on the podcast, check the show notes. We're gonna be sharing some of this imagery, and you can, you know, come back and watch the livestream here as well. But So we're showing Procter Mag. So this is this is an unreleased edition. So we're always trying to break yeah. We're always trying to break news here on everyday AI. But David, just just tell us a bit about how the magazine is is made up and kind of what the what the kind of the the the target or the goal is with the magazine?
Using Midjourney to create a magazine
David [00:04:56]:
Sure. So yeah. And this this issue this is chalk art here. This issue is dropping in about an hour and a half or so, so you'll get to save the PDF, etcetera, and and look through it yourself. Look. I I was always as a kid, I was obsessed with magazines. You know? I I I went to when my parents went to the grocery store, I sit in the magazine now and just pull up whatever I could and just, like, absorb these images. And and this was I have to This was inspired by these 2 particular magazines.
One of them is called Wizard, and the other one is called Toy Fair. And these magazines are defunct now by years, but they stuck in my head, and I just They're about comic books, and they're about collectible toys and i, as you can see in the back, I'm a, you know, I'm a I'm a sneaker head. I'm a collectibles guy. that's always been my thing. I like to be surrounded by, like, all this crazy colorful stuff all the time, and that's sort of how that magazine looks too. You know? It sort of reflects what is around me and how how I kinda like to visually sort of take everything in. So super image heavy, and I I, you know, forgive me to all those guys who hate when somebody splatters, images over text. But I'm like a, you know, I'm like a David Carson guy. I don't know if buddy here, you know, knows Ray Gun and and and someone who just cares about things looking beautiful and not necessarily the perfect rule follower for design. I was always kind of a rule breaker, and I like destructive design. I know that sounds crazy, but I do. And, yeah, that that in a nutshell -- Yeah. So so let's quickly
Jordan [00:06:46]:
actually, before we dive in deeper, I do wanna hit rewind here because not everyone listening or watching has has used Midjourney. So, David, in in the simplest way possible, explain kind of what Midjourney is and how it works.
How Midjourney works
David [00:07:00]:
Well, Midjourney is an AI image generator, basically. And the way that this thing works, it's you know, let's say you took you took an image and you shredded that image. then you already you you you're dividing an image into many different but equal parts. You can pull those pieces apart, and you can actually create multiple images that look similar but are built from the same image. This is the basic concept. It just starts pulling multiple options out of 1 or many other options, and these new options didn't exist before.
And so in the end, it's just generating and predicting data just like ChatGPT does, except this time it's visual. You can go simple. You could literally prompt as I I I actually posted about not too long ago. You can prompt with an emoji, which is a little uncontrollable, but you can still do that. You can prompt to the single word. You can go with a story prompt where it's really kind of like a spoken anecdote almost. You can also go I do a lot of My brain works in, like, an SEO type of a way. I'm, like, you know, tag. Mhmm. So I do a lot of tag style prompts where I'm just sort of lining up turns and separating them with commas to sort of organize it in my head. And, yeah, it's it's to me, it's almost like an experimentation platform. It's it's so I don't wanna say user friendly because it it may not be quite yes soon, hopefully. But it's so, like, intuitive when you when you wrap your head around verbal, you know, text to image. That's it, man. I mean, that's it. Yeah. And
Jordan [00:08:44]:
the intuitiveness, I think, has gotten better. And, you know, if you are listening and and this is catching your your ear or you're like, hey. What is this? So, you know, kinda like what David said, it is just text to image. So think of ChatGPT, but instead of text you get beautiful imagery on the other side. So, you know, OpenAI has their Dolly kind of technology. There's stable diffusion. But Midjourney is, I think, one of the more popular options. And it's you know, as you can see here on the screen, if if you're tuning in, it creates some amazing results. David, the first time you use this with, you you know, having a a design background, obviously, the quality has improved, but What was your thoughts when you could take
David [00:09:28]:
text and get beautiful images out? It was it still is to this day. So, you know, as a designer, we get really satisfied when we complete a project that looks beautiful, and you know you've been through all the details. And it may take you a week, 2 weeks, a month. As an artist, it takes you potentially years to complete a piece, and you get this satisfaction where you kinda get this rush. Right? At least that happens to me. And I I with Midjourney, that satisfaction starts coming so fast that I get it's almost like I get a rush, and it's addicting, to be honest with you. I get addicted, and I have to remember how many, like, fast hours I have. Because, otherwise, I could just go down a rabbit hole of just getting this rush of, like, oh, look at that. And, like, literally, I feel like I get adrenaline as the image is generating. I'm like, what's it gonna be? So it's been life changing, man. I I gotta tell you. It's it's definitely changed the way that I I I always said that AI is not gonna is not gonna replace a refined craftsman, but it's going to change the way that we refine our craft. and you can just tell
Jordan [00:10:40]:
from the second you start using this stuff. Yeah. And and just to follow-up on David's point, in the free daily newsletter today. So go to your everyday AI.com. We have done a couple, you know, quick 5 minute tutorials on Midjourney covering some of the things that you know, David's talking about here. But we do have a question from Audrey, and that kind of brings us to the whole topic of this episode. So saying you know, how do you source the group of texts? Is it through experiments or online threads? So, yeah, David, talk a little bit about that, the the the keyword prompt method that you're using -- Sure. -- to to to get these images -- Oh, sure. -- that we are seeing on screen. Audrey, great question.
Prompting Midjourney
David [00:11:20]:
And for me and and you're what you're talking about are where I call my keywords. You know? And a lot of people use that same term, but I called this the keyword prompt method because what I wanted to do is I wanted to figure out how to call out a certain aesthetic related to an art form. In this case, let's talk about chalk art. Right? And so I'm not familiar with chalk art. I'm not a chalk artist. There is a whole set of technical terms, and there's a vernacular around the art of chalk masterpieces. And I don't know that stuff. Right? And so as an artist and as a prompt engineer, I don't have enough of an arsenal to really be able to call out the aesthetics. So that's where the keyword prompt method comes in. And to answer your question, Audrey, I did all of this via few shot learning with ChatGPT and a and a and a couple other tools like that.
So I built a set of instructions, and and then I call it out. Now you can't do things with AI without double checking your work. So I go through whenever I get my answers back, I have to go through an experiment with every single keyword, make sure it's not calling out some random stuff because I realized that if 5, for example, if I had put chalk masterpiece in here or if I put chalk art too far up in the prompt or if I if I if it's 2 if it's on its own, it starts calling out a lot of pavement. It starts calling out a lot of sidewalks, and I didn't want that. I don't want the experiential images right now. I want I I really wanna show the art format its base. I wanna show the blackboard, basically. Yeah. So the that's kind of hopefully, that gives you an insight into how I built it. Fusion shot learning is extremely powerful. get to know how AI
Jordan [00:13:16]:
really kind of works and and how you can train these models. Mhmm. And then you'll you'll get a lot more out of it. Yeah. That's that's a great point. And, you know, with these especially Midjourney, you know, even myself personally, that's what I found myself doing early on is you know, changing one word at a time, you know, moving the where that word appears to see how it impacts the end result, which is great. And as a reminder, if you are listening on the podcast, you know, we will be sharing, you you know, kind of sharing some of what David's talking about here. So on the screen, you can even see the images and the exact prompt that that was used to create these images.
So another great question here from from Yadi. And and and and I think this is driving a lot of what's gonna be in the news in the coming months. I think there's gonna be a lot of lawsuits. You know? There already have been. But great question from Yaddie saying, any potential rights issues, licensing fees with Midjourney, we'll need to consider in the future.
David [00:14:16]:
Yeah. Yadi, great question. And I think this is a question for all of us. keep literally dropping hints here and there on on some of my comments. I'm like and I think I own this stuff because that's something else that I keep coming back to. now I have. And I was just telling Jordan, I've rolled at least 10,200. Maybe I'm in the 10,500 images right now. And Do I own them? You know, are they mine? because I've downloaded them on my computer, and they they have my name and I mean, are they mine? I have no idea.
What I do know is that I have purposely stayed away from dropping artists' names and anything look, I do a a lot of times, I will say Iron Man. I will do Optimist Prime. I will do characters because if you think about it, those names are very unique. Snoop Dogg doesn't exist. You know Midjourney. It can it's only trained on Snoop Dogg. Right? Like, it's gonna call out Snoop Dogg. So sometimes I want to use those likenesses, and I'm okay with letting those ones go. Right? I'm okay if later on, copyright comes for those, and I have to let go of all my Marvel images or all of my whatever images. I'm okay with it. I don't think it's gonna happen that way because I can go draw one, and it and it's probably still mine because it's my original work. But I I that's my suggestion. It's just -- Yeah. try to develop images that do not include likenesses or artist's names in your prompts. And you see many images that are rolled with multiple artists needs and the prompts. Mhmm. I don't I just don't recommend it. I'm I'm I'm but say but rather safe than than than sorry. You know? Yeah. Yadi, great question, and David, great answer.
Jordan [00:16:02]:
I will say this. You know, a lot of this is gonna be a hot tie not just for Midjourney images, but even just for chatty PT. Right? There's already been -- For sure. -- literally countless lawsuits. And I do think You have to look at how these models were originally trained. And I I think when this technology first came out, people were getting results that had watermarks from the images they were trained from.
So I do think that's something to keep in mind, and, you know, speaking of, like, Adobe Fireflies. So Adobe has their kind of own version of this. It's a little further behind, but Adobe Yadi, to get to your question as an example, they trained their model with all images that they had copyright that they had copyright rights to. So, you you know, completely different. Another question I have for for you, David, is know, probably a lot of people listening. Maybe they're not artists. Maybe they're not graphic designers. How can or or maybe what are some ways that the everyday person who's not an artist or who isn't required to produce, you know, pieces of art. How can they use Midjourney in their daily lives?
How you can use Midjourney in your daily life
David [00:17:07]:
Well, you know, there's so many uses. And I think it comes down to thinking about I have I have a son. I have a five year old son. Okay? And I I have to think about things like he he has activities. Now we're keeping him home for the summer. and he's an artist. He loves drawing. And my wife is not an artist like me but she needs to hold down the 4, and she needs some tools. So I introduce her to Chaju Preeti, and I introduce her to Midjourney. And now, for example, if he needs a a a page to color on, if he needs an empty coloring page, I will literally go to Midjourney and I'll create whatever it is that he wants with lines so that it's a you know, it's good right for coloring. I'll make Mayes's for him.
Then I also use it for I guess, in your daily life, if you're not a a graphic designer, Maybe this doesn't apply to you, but I just use it for inspiration and mood boarding. So I don't go to Pinterest anymore. You know? I don't really go to Google anymore. I really just go to Midjourney to get my my sort of daily fill of inspiration for for my sort of visual explorations every day. But a really good one is is with kids. I I I gotta I have to bring that one's the first one that comes to mind is is making stuff that he can then you know, I can print and then use. And and I don't have to go to Google and struggle to find, like, the right resolution and then the, you know, Yeah. Yeah. That's that's such a good point because I think there's especially with with with kids, you know, that, you know, the example of creating a a custom coloring book,
Jordan [00:18:50]:
I even did this, you know, with one of my nephews who drew things and trying to turn his drawing into, you know, a a piece of art. So I think there's tons of use cases. So we do have one more question here. And, again, this is a gray area, but what's your quick take on this one, David? Yeah. So Pedro's asking what if we wanna use these images in a corporate project.
AI and content creation
David [00:19:09]:
Listen. That, to be honest with you, is up to your corporate client. You you have to close this, and I I've shout out to Genesis Inc here in Denver. They're an ad agency that I've been close to for a long time. And right now, I'm consulting with them and sort of figuring out ways to put AI in place responsibly, intentionally, and skillfully in order to really get yeses from the the clients. Right now, AI's got a lot of sizzle. So you're going to be able to, in my opinion, if you can sell it well, you should be able to even develop the whole new sort of scaled up price point for content creation, the the the the expectations are changing from clients.
Now that AI is introduced, faster, quicker turnaround times. And so in a sense, you really have to fill out the the client. Because if they're if they are full of lawyers and and and they just cannot move past the the question, of of the legal problems, then no. You can't. But if they can be like, you know what? This project has an expiration date. We're gonna put out a bunch of content, and it's gonna live for a month, and then it's gonna die anyway. Let's use it. Right? Like, copyright is not coming for AI images in the next 3 months. So let's just push this out. Right? So in a sense, I do. I use them. But but I have to tell them, listen, this is the this is the legal question. Are you cool with it? Because if so, let's go. And we can make a lot for for potentially a little. Right? So -- Yeah. It's gotta be a open open open conversation, brother. Yeah. Pedro, great great question. David, great answer. It's
Jordan [00:21:00]:
as with a lot of things in AI, there's a lot of gray area right now, but, you know, those those people who are you know, taking advantage in the interim are the people I think who are growing, growing their companies, growing their careers, growing, you you know, their departments, whatever it may be. So Wow. We we touched on a little bit of everything. We gotten to chalk our, you know, looking at prompter mag, David.
David [00:21:23]:
so much good insights from you. Thank you so much for joining the EverydayAI show. Absolutely, man. I'm so happy to be here and answer questions. I I hope I can do it again. I hope that, you know, Midjourney is it becomes a a tool for for everybody and and, you know, You don't get replaced by AI if you're using it. It's just plain and simple. So start using it. If you're a designer, Don't be a stick in the mud. Don't be a purist. You know? This happened before when when computers came out. You know? I I talked to creative directors who were, like, when computers came out, I didn't wanna change. And then I realized it could make 10 things in the same amount of time that I could make 1. You know? So don't be a stick in the mud. It'll just hurt you. You know? Get into it. Jump into it and and do it now because the sizzle is still there. I believe it gets commoditized soon enough. Just enjoy it.
Jordan [00:22:23]:
Yeah. Right? Love it. Love it. Great. great advice from someone who is currently riding the wave. So thank you again. And as a reminder, if you haven't already, go to your everyday AI.com. Make sure to sign up for our free daily newsletter. We're dropping it at 11 AM Central Standard Time every single day, and we're gonna have a lot more. If you like some of the things that David said, if you wanna know more, we're gonna be sharing all those things. So thank you for tuning in, and we hope to see you back tomorrow and every day with everyday AI. Thank you.