The use of Midjourney, where fake Pope and Trump images were produced, has been stopped

Midjourney, an artificial intelligence tool that can generate images from text inputs, is grappling with abuse. The tool, which has recently been released in Midjourney v5, has made huge progress and started to produce visuals that are almost indistinguishable from the real thing. People started to use this high quality to produce fake images that we call “deepfakes”. That’s why Midjourney has ended free trials.

extraordinary abuse

CEO David Holz said on Discord that the company is ending free trials due to “extraordinary demand and abuse.” Holz added that current measures are not enough to curb abuse. For now, you’ll need to pay at least $10 per month to use Midjourney.

Midjourney has found herself at the center of unwanted attention in recent weeks. Users have produced fake images of the arrested Donald Trump and Pope Francis wearing a trendy jacket. Although careful eyes understood that the images were fake, especially the image of the Pope was accepted as real by the masses. So Midjourney, OpenAI’s DALL-E and similar image-generating artificial intelligences are increasingly being used to spread misinformation.

Productive AI worries

In a conversation with users on Wednesday, Holz stated that they are having difficulty determining content policies as artificial intelligence provides more realistic images than ever before. The CEO also stated that they hope to develop an AI auditor that detects Midjourney’s abuse.

As we mentioned in our previous news, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and thousands of other experts in their fields conveyed to the parties in an open letter that artificial intelligence studies should be interrupted immediately. It seems that there is a serious need for artificial intelligence that detects artificial intelligence outputs. In particular, integrating systems that can distinguish whether an image is real or fake on social media platforms can prevent outrage. Not only social media, but also productive artificial intelligence has begun to be used in exams, assignments and even scientific articles.