Beautiful teal and orange clouds fading into a serene sunset with towering minarets and a low hanging watery moon. These images project a feeling where you can almost hear the Azan or call to prayer. This is not a work of art constructed with the stains and brush strokes of an artist, nor is it a digital creation that painstakingly took hours to perfect- this is a computer generated image, made after processing hundreds of files of information. This is how an artifical intelligence sees Islam.

“You may have heard of text-to-audio and text-to-speech but now you can see text-to-image”

A top comment by the uploader of this particular image @philopobist on Reddit noted, “You know what, I’m just happy that there is nothing about terrorism considering how internet thinks about Islam”. Another user @invalidmail200 explained, “This AI has actually been trained to reflect how groups see themselves and not how others see those groups”. Sunsets and Maghrib represent the time of peace for Muslims all over the world- a time of Ramadan fast-breaking and prayers in congregation before Allah.

These picturesque creations are born out of numerous images in a neural network algorithm that can generate dreamy, fantastical looking imagery based on just a few words. Research lab Midjourney and its namesake image generating AI has brought to the forefront something similar to what OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 will do with “text to image”

“Every time you ask the AI to make a picture, it doesn’t really remember or know anything else it’s ever made. It has no will, it has no goals, it has no intention, no storytelling ability. All the ego and will and stories — that’s us”
~ David Holz CEO of Midjourney for The Verge

It was in July 2022 when Midjourney beta became available for anyone owning a Discord account. While parents are not the biggest fans of it, Discord is an audio, video and chat application used by 150 million active users while playing Fortnite, Among US or Minecraft. Beta users of Midjourney within Discord automatically receive 25 free images and have to pay a subscription fee of USD 10 per month for 200 images, or USD 30 per month for unlimited use.

How it works is by entering a #newbies channel on Discord and typing in “/imagine” and then the text of the image you wish to generate. The AI then almost immediately pushes out a 2 by 2 grid of 4 images that can be either a hit or miss. You can try manipulating further by asking the AI to provide variations of the first images or even re-doing the image generation.

“So, we don’t know why it happens, but there’s a particular woman’s face it likes to draw — we don’t know where it comes from, from one of our 12 training datasets — but people just call it “Miss Journey.” And there’s one dude’s face, which is kind of square and imposing, and he also shows up some time, but he doesn’t have a name yet”
~ David Holz CEO of Midjourney for The Verge

The Midjourney AI has no investors and a 10 person team. It has taken contexts from millions of images on the internet as it trained itself. The AI also collected painting styles from the works of several existing art at best. Within the month it has spent in beta mode, you would have most likely already seen images generated by it on magazine covers and other publications.

Many artists and graphic designers however feel apprehensive towards a program that could soon put them out of jobs. Several creatives afterall spend hours perfecting their craft to give out a lovingly made product. To have that replaced with an algorithm that churns out several instantaneous images can be intimidating.

The CEO of Midjourney, David Holz simply believes that similar to walking despite owning cars, Midjourney is simply ” an engine for the imagination” and that it would essentially not put artists and designers out of work. He added, “So it’s a very positive and humanistic thing”. He also speaks of the AI as an art student who takes inspiration from the internet and artists- similar to how a student would develop their own style as inspired by a teacher. He noted that people have already begun using the images generated by Midjourney as art therapy or for projects. He also noted that the AI has helped people with disorders such as aphantasia where they are unable to can’t visualize anything.

As for what we can expect for the future, Holz said this week if what he expects, “You’ll be able to buy a console with a giant AI chip and all the games will be dreams”. So strap on your gaming hats and get ready to snooze, people!