Meta has partnered with Midjourney to license the startup’s AI image and video generation technology. Meta’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang announced on Friday in a post in a thread. Wang said the Meta research team will work with Midjourney to bring its technology into future AI models and products.
“We need to take every approach to ensure that Meta is able to provide people with the best possible product,” Wang said. “This means working with world-class talent, an ambitious computing roadmap and the best players across the industry.”
The Midjourney Partnership helps develop products that compete with industry-leading AI image and video models, including Openai’s Sora, Black Forest Lab’s Flux, and Google’s VEO. Last year, Meta imagined its own AI image generation tools, including Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, and deployed them to several of its products. Meta also has Movie Gen, an AI video generation tool that allows users to create videos from the prompts.
Midjourney Marks Meta’s latest deal licensing agreements are moving forward in the AI race. Earlier this year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg hired jobs for AI talent and provided researcher compensation packages worth more than $100 million. The social media giant also invested $14 billion in scale AI and acquired an AI voice startup. PlayAI.
Meta held discussions with several other major AI labs on other acquisitions, and Zuckerberg spoke with Elon Musk about joining the $97 billion Openai purchase bid (eventually not taking part in the offer).
The terms of Meta’s contract with Midjourney remain unknown, but the startup CEO David Holz said in a post on X that his company is independent without investors. Midjourney is one of the few leading AI model developers who have never received external funding. At one point, Meta spoke about getting a startup with Midjourney, according to Upstarts Media.
Midjourney was co-founded in 2022 and quickly became a leader in the AI Image Generation Space, with a realistic and unique style. By 2023, the startup reportedly had been keeping pace to generate $200 million in revenue. The startup sells subscriptions starting at $10 a month. It offers more expensive tiers that offer more AI image generations, and costs as much as $120 a month. In June, the startup released its first AI video model V1.
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Meta’s partnership with Midjourney claims that it happened just two months after the startup was sued by Disney and Universal, and trained AI image models with copyrighted works. While several AI model developers, including META, have faced similar allegations from copyright holders, recent lawsuits relating to AI training data have sided with high-tech companies.
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