AI tool used to generate fake images of Donald Trump, Pope Francis no longer available for free

In the past few weeks, you might have come across images of former US President Donald Trump being dragged to jail by police authorities or Pope Francis in a trendy white puffer coat. They were all fake. The images were made using Midjourney, an AI image generator. The company has decided to end the free trial version of the service due to 'extraordinary demand and trial abuse'.

Midjourney CEO David Holz made the announcement on Discord (first cited by The Washington Post), citing concerns over the high demand for hyper-realistic images. 

However, that was not the primary reason why AI image generator Midjourney decided to put a full stop to free trials. In a report by The Verge, Midjourney CEO Holz claimed that one of the reasons to end the service was "massive amounts of people making throwaway accounts to get free images."

Holz even pointed to a single 'How to' video about the Midjourney service that went viral in China. This led to high demand which clashed with the shortage of GPU, ending up performance of the paid version of the service. 

AI-faked images of Donald Trump’s imagined arrest

IT'S A FAKE pic.twitter.com/jbYfnImVFN

— 🇯​🇴​🇭​🇳​🇾​ 🇿​🇮​🇩 ♥️🇮🇳 (PARODY) (@Johny_mera_name) March 24, 2023

Holz also clarified that the realistic images of Pope Francis in a white jacket and former US president Donald Trump being dragged to jail were created using the paid version, which provides access to the latest version 5 of Midjourney. This new version has fixed one of the biggest problems in the previous iterations, the depiction of humans. The latest version does not create extra limbs, teeth or fingers like the free trial version. 

The fake pictures of Donald Trump and Pope Francis were quickly discovered as fake due to the dramatized effect but the images just showed the scope of misinformation that can be generated using AI image generators. 

Also read: These women don't exist! AI-generated party images go viral