Midjourney Now Lets You Generate Consistent Characters Across Multiple Images
- By Paul Mah
- March 13, 2024
Midjourney this week unveiled a new feature that lets users recreate characters across multiple images. The announcement came via the official Midjourney X account.
According to Midjourney: “We're testing a new algorithm today to help you have "consistent characters" across your images… We hope this helps you play with telling stories and building new worlds <3”
The ability to generate consistent characters is a major hurdle for AI image generators. By nature of how they work, generative AI models tend to create very different outputs across multiple runs, even with the same prompts.
While ideal for text-based large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude, this inconsistency is a problem when it comes to image generation by users who might want to storyboard a film, create a comic book, or any scenario where the same character is portrayed across different scenes.
Consistent character
Midjourney’s new consistent character feature means users can now take a previously created character as the starting point for a new image. A “variance” toggle gives users some control over how closely the new image mirrors the original characters.
The announcement triggered a flurry of social media posts as various users posted the results of their prompts online. For instance, tech publication VentureBeat created a bald man with a beard and eye patch and successfully reproduced additional images of the same man.
A note by founder David Holz highlighted that this new feature works best for characters made from Midjourney images and that it was not designed for real people and photos due to the likelihood of distortions.
This has not stopped some users from experimenting with uploaded images, however. Responding to the Midjourney tweet, several users showed how they uploaded images of advertisements where they swapped out promoted items for other objects. Others uploaded photos of their favorite actors and transplanted them to other locations and in other attires.
There is no question that the new Consistent Characters feature will make it easier than ever for content creators to visualize their creations better and accelerate the creation of new media content through the rapid creation of storyboards.
However, it is equally likely to trigger additional copyright headaches in the road ahead, as well as making it far easier for the creation of deep fakes.
Image credit: iStockphoto/francescoch
Paul Mah
Paul Mah is the editor of DSAITrends, where he report on the latest developments in data science and AI. A former system administrator, programmer, and IT lecturer, he enjoys writing both code and prose.