Episode 7: Video Generation with Midjourney

Want ideas on how marketing professionals are actually using AI in their daily life? Listen in to Will Francis and Danny Richman chat about what's new in how AI is affecting marketing

This Week: a look at where AI is at right now in terms of generating quality video. Midjourney is clearly leading the way in terms of beautiful and impressive output, but it still has a way to go to making it accessible for more to use. 

Will Francis is a digital marketing expert and trainer while Danny Richman is an SEO consultant.

Check out all episodes of AI with DMI and our digital marketing podcast.

You can also watch our earlier webinar with Will, Danny and Clark Boyd where they dig deep into what ChatGPT really means for marketers.

“The first edition I received of the Midjourney... I've actually sealed that up in plastic and put it away because I'm convinced that that will be a collector's piece.” Danny

Video Transcript

Will Francis  00:00

The last thing to talk about, There's been some interesting developments in content-related AI matters. So Generative AI: Runwayml is one of the companies at the forefront of generative video. And a couple of weeks ago, their Gen-2 engine came came out, which has more sophisticated video generation, it's kind of like, if you imagine very early image generation based on text prompts. Well, this is where we're at with this, but it's video generation based on text prompts. Have you had much of a play with that?

Danny Richman  00:42

Yeah. I mean, as soon as I heard that it was now available, generally, I went and started just trying out a few different ideas. It's fun, and it's pretty impressive that you can just type into a box a description of something that you want to see in video format, you know, "a man holding a stapler and stapling some papers together", you know, and you'll get that, you will get what you asked for. It's very early days with this. The clips are very short, nearly just like a second or two. And that really limits its use at the moment. The quality isn't quite there. And one of the other challenges with it at the moment is because it very much looks as if this is all based on Stable Diffusion, we still have some issues with hands and limbs and I think both you and I had an experience where we saw some quite upsetting - what looked like - deformities and things. Yeah, it can be can be quite harrowing, looking at some of the output of this. But I think we have to look past that, I think we have to just consider the fact that this is early days, and within a very short space of time, we are going to be able to produce video content, long form video content simply by describing it.

Will Francis  02:16

Yes. How long do you think till we get to the point that Midjourney's at, because Midjourney is great. Midjourney really works, it delivers on the promise, you can get incredibly high quality imagery, you know. That's one of the most popular things on Reddit at the moment is just like, "guess whether this is a Midjourney image or a real image", and people often get it wrong. You know, so we're there. When are we going to be there with video, do you think that seems like it might take a while?

Danny Richman  02:43

I don't think there's ever been a company that has so impressed me, and equally frustrated me as much as Midjourney. Because the quality of their output and the quality of their technology is just heads and shoulders above every other image generator that I have tried at the moment: you know, Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, even Adobe who are coming out with this, you know, with their new Firefly thing that they're using at the moment, you know.

Midjourney is just leaps and bounds ahead of all of that, it doesn't have these images with weird fingers and hands. And the quality of the output is stunning. I mean, just beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. You know, the artwork that I have seen people generate with Midjourney, based on nothing more than just a simple description is stunning, absolutely stunning, you know. But Midjourney, as an organization, all of their focus has been on the quality of that output. And that's meant they have been completely disinterested in creating an API that you could then use for all kinds of, you know, practical uses. They don't seem to be that interested at the moment in allowing people to use it to generate video, which it could do a really good job at, you know, it would take longer, it would take a lot longer.

Will Francis  04:14

It's just 25 images a second, isn't it? Which in itself is a barrier to some people isn't it? You know, I've sat with someone and tried to walk them through that and it wasn't as simple as I thought it was gonna be. But I'm already on Discord so you know,

Danny Richman  04:53

It's a huge barrier but you know, look to give Midjourney credit, if they were in this just for the money, they would have been growing and expanding, building their team out to offer all these additional services and things that would generate huge amounts of income for them. And that just has not been their priority. They're keeping it small. And they're keeping their focus very much on improving the quality of the images before they then start thinking about things like video generation API's, all these other things that people have been trying out for.

Will Francis  05:30

I think that's great. I mean, I salute them for that. I mean, they do have a print magazine. I just received my second edition today actually. And it's lovely, it is lovely. It's just like an art magazine. And it's actually a pleasure to look at and it's lovely because it gives you the prompts for all the artwork and it's just, it's become a genuine, it's not debatable whether it's an art form or not. It really is.

Danny Richman  05:57

Yeah, I mean, the first edition which I received, you know, when it came out, I've actually sealed that up in plastic and put it away because I'm convinced that that will be a collector's piece.

Will Francis  06:10

Well yeah, I get it did give it to my wife to read. She put a cup of coffee on it and it's got like a ring on the cover. But yes, it is lovely. And I think that is testament to the quality of the output right can put together that kind of product with it. Okay, great.