Midjourney introduces collaborative worldbuilding device ‘Patchwork’

Midjourney, the favored AI picture technology startup with greater than 21 million customers on its Discord server alone, is branching out from AI picture creation and modifying.

Patchwork revealed

Max Kreminski, chief of Midjourney’s Storytelling Lab, demoed the brand new device, known as “Patchwork,” in a livestream screenshare on Discord and X through Restream.

He clarified that it will be a stand alone app that might require Midjourney accounts to log into, and that the URL can be obtainable as a “research preview” within the Midjourney Discord server’s “updates” channel. Customers might want to join their Midjourney Discord account to their Google Account to entry Patchwork’s analysis preview. The corporate posted directions for doing so on its X account.

The device seems to be a web-based clean white, infinite canvas with a “toolbox” on the left facet of the browser display screen, displaying quite a lot of buttons labeled for “character,” “event,” “faction,” “place,” “prop,” and “random,” in addition to instruments corresponding to “note,” “image,” “portal,” “save” and “share.” “Save” downloads a JSON file with hyperlinks to all of the Midjourney photographs created within the canvas. Midjourney considers every canvas a separate digital “world.”

To modify between worlds, the consumer creates a “portal,” a small black round button.

To generate a brand new world, the consumer enters a textual content immediate into an editor bar on the prime of the “create” display screen and selects a number of of a set of 10 completely different picture types.

This then produces a brand new whiteboard with a bunch of latest nonetheless picture property and textual content bins or entities generally known as “scraps”, together with enter bins that permit the consumer to immediate new photographs or settings that match the preliminary world description, even entire new AI generated character descriptions.

Within the demo livestream, the character identify mechanically populated with Marcus “Dizzy” Gillespie, echoing the identify of the well-known jazz musician. Dragging the outline into a brand new character picture creator field produces 4 new AI-generated photographs.

Including new character bins, the consumer can then immediate to create names and traits, in addition to motivations that may spur a battle for the idea of a narrative.

The consumer can then hyperlink characters along with traces that denote connections between them. They will additionally write motion sequences and scene descriptions that every narrate a narrative. Every character can be utilized in a number of photographs and these photographs gathered along with a single choice.

The consumer can “share” the board with different Midjourney customers who can collaborate, purportedly in real-time, with a number of cursors shifting throughout the identical shared canvas. A single world can help dozens, even as much as 100 customers, in response to Kreminski. Nonetheless, he famous that the extra customers, the extra chaotic the expertise can be.

Kreminski mentioned solely customers who’re logged in can view boards (for now), however sooner or later, boards could also be viewable by non-users. He talked about that tabletop roleplaying teams have been already utilizing the characteristic to chart their campaigns.

He additionally mentioned that Midjourney model 7 (V7) would come with a setting to permit a number of character consistency throughout completely different and new photographs.

Shifting in direction of immersive, 3D worlds

Kreminski additional revealed that there have been not less than 3 completely different massive language fashions powering the appliance, together with a fine-tuned open supply one distinctive to Midjourney.

In the end, it seems to be a novel, complicated, highly effective, considerably overwhelming but compelling device for storyboarding. I may simply see it being utilized by writers and movie administrators, sport designers, comedian guide creators and even reside theater administrators and writers.

In the long run, Kreminski mentioned there was a “very clear path in terms of escalation of the details and interactions in the worlds,” together with totally immersive 3D digital actuality scenes, however that was probably years away.

The information comes as different AI researchers, startups corresponding to Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs, and large tech firms corresponding to Google search to develop AI that may create 3D immersive, navigable worlds on-line from easy prompts or photographs.

Extra Midjourney updates coming quickly

As well as, Midjourney’s creator David Holz joined the announcement livestream to state the startup would launch a number of mannequin personalization modes within the coming days.

Presently, Midjourney permits customers to fee photographs to personalize the sorts of visuals they wish to see in generations, and fine-tune the mannequin to non-public preferences. Now, the startup will permit customers to have a number of customized variations they will toggle between.

As well as, Holz shared that Midjourney would permit customers to add and reference a number of photographs to boards to information generations.

Moreover, someday after Christmas (December 25), Midjourney will probably be introducing video fashions and a Midjourney V7 AI picture generator that can characteristic elevated immediate understanding.

Holz additional revealed that Midjourney is engaged on three to 4 new {hardware} initiatives and mentioned the startup was “trying to branch out and become a full research lab…it may take us six months to announce all six things.”