Midjourney temporarily shuts down free trial access, citing unusual demand and abuse
Popular AI image generator Midjourney ended its free trial this week, The Washington Post reported.
Midjourney CEO David Holz announced the news in a Discord post on Tuesday morning, citing "unusual demand and trial abuse."
According to a follow-up post, Holz and his colleagues attempted to address the abuse with security patches. However, the attempted changes were not enough to resolve the issue. "We tried restarting the trial with new abuse safety measures, but they didn't seem to be enough, so we're shutting down the free trial again," Holz said in a Wednesday post.
Currently, the company's paid service is still available, and the free trial is still suspended, but it may resume at any time.
While the Washington Post report initially suggested that the "abuse" in question was related to a recent spate of viral deepfakes, the company denied that. Holz pointed out, " There are some pretty big misunderstandings in the article. We stopped the experiment because a large number of users get free generated images by creating one-time accounts, which is not the same as temporary gpu Shortages happen at the same time. These two factors also lead to reduced service for paying users. "
The “new security measure” mentioned in Wednesday’s Discord post? According to Holz, it’s also meant to limit users to one free trial per person. We're still trying to figure out how to get the free trial back, we tried asking for a valid email, but that wasn't enough, so we're back to square one. "he
The use of image generators to create deepfakes is gaining popularity due to the recent boom in generative artificial intelligence. Social media is full of untrue but very convincing images, such as various fake photos of former President Trump's arrest that went viral after news of his indictment, all of which were created using Midjourney Created.
Holz hinted that the images were not reason enough to restrict or shut down Midjourney's access. Instead, the company claims the current ban on free trials is a form of profit protection. It wants users to move from a free trial to a paid subscription, not try it for free again.
Holz further suggested that the most recent set of problematic political imagery is a product of Midjourney v5, which is only available to paid subscribers anyway.
Still, the CEO said Midjourney is working on improving moderation. He wrote: "I think we're still trying to figure out what the right moderation policy is. We're listening to feedback from experts and the community and trying to be really thoughtful. We've got some new systems coming soon."
Compared with peers such as OpenAI's DALL-E, Midjourney's standards are much looser. It is DALL-E's policy to prohibit users from creating any sexual or violent content, including actual political figures. However, with Compared to Stable Diffusion, where users can download open source software and effectively do whatever they like, Midjourney is already more restrictive.
Suspending free Midjourney access won't solve the problem. And, again, the CEO claimed that the decision to stop the free trial was not motivated by the spread of deepfakes.
