Imagine a library made from yarn. Or skyscrapers in the style of Salvador Dalí. Or simply your ideal home, as realistic or fantastical as you like. All it takes is the prompt “/imagine” followed by a few words of description — say, “a neofuturist villa made of concrete and bamboo” — in order for artificial intelligence-powered art generator Midjourney to summon images of whatever you ask for, in under a minute.
Several developers rolled out text-to-image AI programs to the public last year, including Dall-E and Stable Diffusion. These tools, which were trained on vast amounts of online images — leading to copyright lawsuits — became major hits with general audiences, who put these programs through their paces. Amateur designers are using AI assistants to realize fan art, stock “photos,” and a painting that won an arts competition.
