Midjourney goes beyond AI creation: Its image editor is here

Would you ever think of editing your existing images using Midjourney? Well, now it’s a thing. Midjourney has launched its Web Editor, which lets you play with image editing and not just create scenes and people that don’t exist.

In the announcement on Discord, CEO David Holz wrote that the new image editor will let you “edit any uploaded / web image using Midjourney” and “retexture images (via depth controlnet).” The latter means that the editor will keep the shape of the scene or object “but repaints all the texture/colors/details according to your prompt.”

The key features of Midjourney’s Web Editor include:

• Editing capabilities: You can zoom, rotate, and crop images.
• Precise inpainting: A digital brush tool allows for detailed modifications.
• Retexture feature: As mentioned, you can alter colors and textures while preserving the original image structure.

It’s also worth noting that the Web Editor is available on Midjourney’s website, not as a Discord feature. Perhaps you remember that Midjourney’s AI generator also moved to a dedicated website earlier this year. By moving beyond its Discord-exclusive model, Midjourney likely aims to make its new tool accessible to a broader audience and perhaps beat the competition in image editing.

Potential issues

While this development holds immense potential for creative expression and efficiency, it also raises ethical concerns. The ability to manipulate real-world images with AI could be misused for malicious purposes, such as creating deepfakes or spreading misinformation. To mitigate these risks, Midjourney plans to implement strict moderation measures and embed metadata in AI-generated images to ensure transparency.

“Because these new features are so powerful we’re going to restrict the deployment of them to a subset of the current community and increase our human moderation over the outputs (there’s also new more advanced AI moderators which we feel will do a great job).”

As AI technology continues to advance, it is crucial to strike a balance between innovation and ethical responsibility. We’ll see how and if Midjourney will manage to keep up with this.

[via Tech Radar; lead image created using Midjourney]

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