Midjourney's Unexpected Leap into AI Hardware Development

Midjourney is traveling into AI hardware territory - because that's apparently what you do

Midjourney is famous for being among the better AI image generators, but now the company is looking to get into hardware, too. The company announced the shift in strategy on X (formerly Twitter) by soliciting people to apply to join the new team. There aren't a lot of details about what kind of hardware Midjourney is looking to build. In follow-up posts, Midjourney said it won't be a pendant and that it has "different form factors" under consideration. The company hinted it would create something more immersive, though it may have been a joke when one post described the hardware as something to "go inside of." Though Midjourney is looking to staff up for the hardware team, there is at least one major name on board. Midjourney hired former Apple Vision Pro headset Hardware Engineering Manager Ahmad Abbas as the head of its hardware division last year. Abbas has a history with Midjourney CEO David Holz dating back to their time together at Leap Motion and has the virtual reality and hardware credentials to support some ambitious ideas at Midjourney. Midjourney's foray into hardware comes at a time when the company is facing stiff competition from other AI image creators, including Flux, which is embedded on X through the Grok AI chatbot, as well as the recently upgraded Ideogram. Diversifying into hardware makes sense on the face of it, but AI devices have had a rough path. That might be why Midjourney explicitly rejected the idea of a pendant, which is what the Humane AI Pin and new NotePin from Plaud.ai look like, and not too different from the Rabbit R1 device either. Excitement among Midjourney's fans aside, the company will have to do something to stand out as innovative if it wants its hardware to be interesting, useful, and well-received. Not even tech giants like Meta or Snapchat can reach their sales goals for AI-powered devices like their smart glasses. Still, it's fun to imagine what the Midjourney's hardware might be Perhaps it would involve more direct interaction with the AI-generated visuals it produces or even crossing over into the much-vaunted and now quietly ignored realm of the metaverse.

Why the Hell is Midjourney Entering Hardware Business?

Earlier this month, AI image-generation platform Midjourney announced new and improved features with the Midjourney 6.1 version. Last week, they announced free trials on its web browser in a probable bid to attract new customers, which even saw a significant shift in user engagement from their Discord server. As if that wasn't enough, the company made a surprising announcement of its plan to enter the hardware market. Source: X While this might be an official announcement, Midjourney had been working on the hardware division for sometime now. Earlier this year, people observed that the former hardware engineering manager for Apple's Vision Pro spatial computing headset, Ahmad Abbas, was appointed as the head of hardware at Midjourney in December last year. Abbas had also previously worked with Elon Musk's Neuralink in the hardware design team. Interestingly, Abbas was also a former colleague of the founder of Midjourney, David Holz, at his venture Leap Motion. Looking back at Holz's career trajectory, the Midjourney founder had essentially been on the hardware side. His last company, Leap Motion, which is now Ultraleap, was into mid-air haptics and 3D hand tracking. In 2018, the company even announced an open-source AR Dev Kit titled Project North Star. This is particularly relevant in fields like AR/VR, where the integration between what the user sees and how they interact with it needs to be flawless. Hardware tailored for Midjourney's software could provide a competitive edge in user experience. With the founder and head of hardware coming from an VR/spatial computing domain, speculation and discussions on Midjourney's new hardware line was obviously on similar lines. A year ago, when text-to-image AI generation platforms were just emerging, Midjourney was almost like the reigning king. While the company continues to do well, remaining bootstrapped, and reportedly generating over $200 million in annual revenue through subscriptions, it continues to face stiff competition from multiple players. Big tech companies such as OpenAI, Google, and now X, have all entered the AI image generation space, with products such as Imagen and Grok2. Furthermore, given how StabilityAI, the makers of Stable Diffusion, have been facing a management shift -- with the latest development being the founder Emad Mostaque's departure from the company, which was also reported to have failed at raising funds -- it is only advisable that companies either diversify or find a moat. While there is no official confirmation on what the product will be, speculation has been rife all over X. From guessing AI pendants, (with people hoping, it's not) to giant orbs, alluding to an old tweet of Holz, people have been making wild guesses. However, the company stuck to not clarifying. "We aren't announcing anything specific yet, but we have multiple efforts in flight," said their X post. Source: X When Midjourney posted the above question to a user, the discussions that led thereafter transcended into the possibility of an AI immersive art-kind of experience. A user even speculates if it would be a TeamLab kind of concept, where artworks move and interact with each other in a museum. Considering how AI art is an emerging trend and how Midjourney has powered a lot of these artists, it would be interesting if the company would be able to design something that would help them advance on the hardware and software side. It is also interesting to note that Midjourney opened up personality surveys to people in order to 'understand the structure of personality and its relationship to perceptions of beauty.' While there may not be much to connect here, it certainly seems that the company is generating a highly customised product.

Midjourney feels that it is time to start developing hardware and could start with Saruman's palantir. - Softonic

Midjourney, the company known for its AI-powered image generation tool, has officially announced its foray into the world of hardware. The announcement was made through its official Twitter account, where the company also invited potential candidates to apply to be part of its new hardware division. David Holz, founder of Midjourney and former CTO of Leap Motion, leads this new project. A few months ago, Holz hired Ahmad Abbas, with whom he had previously worked at Leap Motion. Abbas, who was also responsible for the hardware of Apple Vision Pro glasses for five years, now appears on LinkedIn as "head of hardware" at Midjourney. Although the company has not yet revealed what type of device they are developing, their recent posts on Twitter have generated all kinds of speculation. However, Midjourney has already confirmed that their device "will not be a pendant," in response to the growing trend of AI hardware devices that have not been successful. Additionally, the company mentioned that they have "multiple efforts underway" and hinted that there are "definitely opportunities for more form factors," suggesting that they are exploring various options. A tweet from Holz a few months ago already hinted at this step by Midjourney. On that occasion, the company's founder commented: "we will make the orb," in response to a joke about creating a spherical device inspired by Saruman's palantir in The Lord of the Rings. Despite the activity on Twitter, Midjourney has been careful not to provide a specific timeline, so it could be months before the product is revealed. For now, the company joins others in the search for what the future of AI-based hardware should be.