Back With AI Art Updates

In this newsletter:

• 🗣 Back With AI Art Updates

• 🗞 News and Top Reads

• 📌 AI Art Tutorial: Runway Gen-3 Videos

• 🎨 Featured Artist: Caspar Jade

• 🖼 AI-Assisted Artwork of the Week

🗣 Back With AI Art Updates

Wow, it has been a long break! Nothing significant happened; I’ve just been rethinking how this newsletter can bring more value. Over the past year, AI image generation has been developing at lightning speed. New tools and features in our favorite applications have been emerging almost every week. My focus has been on helping AI creators by explaining these new features and how to use them effectively.

Currently, I feel like AI image generation is at a sort of plateau. However, AI image generation tools are becoming more user-friendly. Midjourney, which has been the focus of this newsletter, now allows image generation through their website, making the process much more intuitive than using Discord. As a result, I feel that my guides may not be as necessary anymore.

At the same time, it looks like AI video generation may have a major leap this year. We have already seen huge progress demonstrated by OpenAI’s Sora, though it’s not publicly released yet. Additionally, Runway has released its Gen-3 Alpha model, which is very promising and available to the public, but you can only generate a limited number of videos with your credits. While it’s not yet a tool that can be used regularly, it definitely has the potential to become one later this year.

In this newsletter issue, I will focus on the latest AI art updates that you might have missed. However, I would love to hear your opinions on what you want to see in future issues. I would greatly appreciate it if you could answer the poll at the end of this email. Now, let’s dive straight into the AI art news, video tutorials, and featured artists.

~ Kate

🗞 News and Top Reads

• Runway has officially launched Gen-3 Alpha, their newest AI video generator, to all users:

  • Last month, Runway introduced Gen-3 Alpha, the inaugural model in their upcoming series trained to learn ‘general world models’.

  • The Gen-3 Alpha model enhances several critical features such as character and scene consistency, camera motions and techniques, and transitions between scenes.

  • This release represents the most significant advancement in AI video technology since Sora.

• Stability AI faced some existential issues after their CEO left earlier this year, but now things are looking up for them. They successfully raised $80 million and announced that Prem Akkaraju, a seasoned executive with extensive experience in media, entertainment, and technology, has joined as their new CEO.

• Magnific AI, the leading AI-powered image upscaler, has released an Adobe Photoshop plugin. This means you can now use Magnific directly within Photoshop.

• Odyssey, a new startup co-founded by veterans of the self-driving car industry, has just emerged from stealth mode with a ‘Hollywood-grade’ AI video generation platform:

  • The team is developing high-quality visual AI that can generate and direct stunning scenery, characters, lighting, and motion.

  • The company’s team includes AI researchers from major tech companies and artists who have worked on blockbuster films like Dune and Avengers.

• Midjourney has released a book to celebrate one year of their magazine.

  • "Year One" showcases inspiring images from V4, V5, and V6. It includes prompts, feature milestones, and profiles of community members.

  • The book costs $75 and is shipped globally for free.

• In case you missed it, last month Midjourney released a new Personalization feature.

  • The Model Personalization learns from votes in pair ranking and images you like from the explore page. If you choose to apply personalization, it will generate images that are more likely to fit your aesthetic preferences.

  • You can also share your personalization code with other users so they can generate images that match your aesthetic.

  • Learn more here.

📌 AI Art Tutorial: Runway Gen-3 Videos

In this video, Matt Wolfe showcases the capabilities of the latest AI video generator from Runway, Gen-3 Alpha. It appears significantly more impressive compared to earlier versions. Additionally, the Runway team has developed a prompt guide for this new tool to assist users in utilizing it more effectively.

🎨 Featured Artist: Caspar Jade

Caspar has been a portrait photographer in Berlin for many years. AI technology has now enabled him to express his creativity in a new way. While the computer generates the images, Caspar makes numerous small decisions that profoundly influence the image's impact. He is particularly drawn to cinematic images that possess strong narrative power.

🖼 AI-Assisted Artwork of the Week

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