Midjourney Solely Credited as Article Illustrator in Major News Publication

The sharp eyes of New World Notes' image curator Cajsa Lilliehook caught what looks to be a pretty major breakthrough (or first step toward disaster, depending on your point of view): The Bulwark, a major US news analysis publication, is using Midjourney to create illustrations for their articles -- and crediting Midjourney as the image source. (As opposed to, say, an actual human illustrator.) From a cursory search, this seems to be the first example of Midjourney used for a non-tech, non-grassroots illustration by a professional publication that would normally pay a graphic artist and/or image bank like GettyImages or Shutterstock for work like this. 

So this is notable! Also notable: It's not very good. Meant to illustrate Trump's questionable legal defense fund, the image doesn't convey any of that context at all, and actually looks more like a pro-Trump graphic. (Except, that is, the "Save America" slogan is washed out by the background -- a sloppy look, whatever your political perspective.) In other words, a human illustrator would have done a much better job.

But then again, hiring a human is a lot more costly.

I've actually considered using Midjourney for images in New World Notes posts, rather than risking a nastygram from Getty Images or whoever. Fortunately Second Life and other metaverse platforms I usually cover are notably more chill about IP rights regarding screenshots.

Then again, as I've reported recently, I don't think it's an either/or situation where Midjourney and other AI image generators will replace human artists entirely. Rather, Midjourney will best serve as yet another technical tool in the human illustrator's kit, giving them a base from which to curate and improve on. That very thing seems to be happening with the Bulwark: This article's image also used Midjourney, but is a composite of that plus a photo from GettyImages; in other words, a photo taken by a human, with a Midjourney image curated by a human, and then composited by a human.

Comments

[Kala Bijoux]

Midjourney didn't put that text on the image, a human did that. They probably just composited it super quickly from the Trump campaign in photoshop. Midjourney currently makes text that looks like an ancient alien rune, tho sometimes you will luck out and get the actual text, but it's a huge amount of effort and much easier to just do it in photoshop. And I agree that this is another tool for artists - and it lowers the barrier for people to make art without artistic training - but it also is going to open a lot of doors. (Also if you want to see how a writer is using Midjourney to illustrate her substack newsletters - take a look at Lyz Lenz' s substack.