Midjourney, one of the top Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) tools, has temporarily suspended its free trial plan. The move means that users will no longer be able to generate images for free and will have to choose between subscription plans ranging from 10 to 60 USD. Midjourney had previously allowed users to "freeload" 24 minutes of GPU computing time for free.
Midjourney Pricing
The decision to suspend the free plan was made to reduce abuse, according to official Midjourney documentation. The latest v5 model has made significant progress in processing realistic images, achieving results that are almost indistinguishable from real photos. However, a large number of AI-generated photos of real-life celebrities, such as the Pope and US President Biden, have been circulating online, posing significant compliance risks for commercial companies.
Pope Francis by Midjourney
David Holz, CEO of Midjourney, stated that removing the free plan is not a permanent decision and that they will relaunch the free trial plan after implementing appropriate security measures. Currently, Midjourney has a preliminary filtering system in place that prevents users from generating highly sensitive photos using certain prompts.
Source: Gamelook