The internet will never be the same. It’s virtually crawling with AI bots with niche roles, at the ready to deliver to our every prompt. Some AIs can write whole essays and generate beautiful artwork. Photo and art generation is phenomenal aspect of AI, and for blog writing it really beats choosing a free stock photo. Van Gogh and Walt Whitman would be rolling in their graves.
At Hounder, we’re always finding new ways to make the most of AI. Whether its text or image-based, the options are seemingly endless. Here’s an even better idea: using AI to speak to another AI. In this blog, we’ll show you how to use ChatGPT to create the best prompts for Midjourney to create the perfect AI masterpiece.
What is Midjourney?
MidJourney is another generative artificial intelligence program, similar to OpenAI’s DALL-E. The AI generates images based on your natural language descriptions or “prompts.” After feeding the Machine Learning algorithm a text-based prompt, creates a brand new image. Learned from a massive amount of image data, Midjourney has garnered a reputation for creating artful imagery.
Only on Discord
This part is a bit unusual; unlike its AI app and website counterparts, the only way to use Midjourney is through Discord, a messaging platform. Uniquely, the AI only exists within its Discord server, including a community of folks sharing their AI-generated virtual masterpieces. Unfortunately, when you sign up, you only get a beta trial unless you can pay to subscribe, then you'll receive more privileges.
Why make prompts in another AI?
Staying out of the uncanny valley
First off, why would we ask another AI, ChatGPT, to give us prompts for Midjourney? Well, this cross-AI approach actually increases the accuracy of the prompts. Otherwise, the AI may create an image that reeks of the uncanny valley. Many people remarked in the wake of the AI art craze with DALL-E that its images would come out with distorted faces, extra fingers, strange animals, and everything in between.
Plain old accuracy
Though your creativity is important, prompts from ChatGPT can make the syntax perfect for its AI cousin. With accuracy comes detail, too. For example, ChatGPT took my vague command of "Write me a prompt for Midjourney" and delivered 10 loaded sentences like this one: "Create an image of a caravan of traders making their way across a vast desert, with towering sand dunes and a scorching sun in the background." That amount of detail in the sentence should reflect in the AI art you get back from Midjourney.
Steps to create images in Midjourney via ChatGPT-generated prompts
Video explanation from a Hounder developer
Step 1: Join Midjourney Discord
If you haven't already, this is truly the first step. It's not as simple as opening the website on your browser. Download Discord on your PC or phone and visit Midjourney.com for the link It's a public server, so you shouldn't run into issues when joining. Click accept and then you're in with a beta trial. You'll need to head over to the "#getting-started" channel for some other info to set up shop on this server.
Step 2: Ask ChatGPT for prompts
It’s as simple as that. I asked: “Can you help me generate some prompts for Midjourney image generation tool?”
Then you can give a small bit of detail, here's my next input: "Give me 5 prompts for my blog post about "ChatGPT as a code debugger" so probably things that are tech and AI related."
Now you've got 5 concise prompts. Here's the first two ChatGPT gave me:
"Generate an image of a computer screen with lines of code and ChatGPT appearing as a virtual assistant, highlighting errors in the code."
"Show ChatGPT as a robot with a magnifying glass, scanning through lines of code, fixing errors in real time."
Step 3: Copy & paste prompt to Midjourney
This may be a bit confusing at first since, like most Discord servers, Midjourney has multiple channels to choose from. If you're in the beta trial, go to one of the "newbies" channels and type "/imagine" where you'll paste your prompt from ChatGPT into the Discord message. For subscribers, you can create a direct message with the "Midjourney Bot" to send prompts and receive your AI generations in one place. Direct messages with the bot can be a quieter experience; there are many people in this server, so you may get overloaded with an influx of other users' art.
Step 4: Check out your AI art
In about 60 seconds, Midjourney will generate high-quality images right in the channel or direct message. If you don't like what you see, you can always modify the prompt or get more specific with your request depending on your vision for the image.
