Midjourney, one of the earliest AI image-generating services on the web, has released its first new AI image model in nearly a year.
Dubbed V7, the model, which began rolling out in alpha around midnight Eastern on Friday, comes a week after OpenAI debuted a new image generator in ChatGPT that quickly went viral for its ability to create Ghibli-style photos. Midjourney’s is not a Ghibli-optimized model — at least not officially — but nonetheless generates aesthetically pleasing works, at least to this reporter’s dilettante eye.
To use it, you’ll first have to rate around 200 images to build a Midjourney “personalization” profile if you haven’t already. This profile tunes the model to your individual visual preferences; V7 is Midjourney’s first to have personalization switched on by default.
Once you’ve completed that task, you’ll be greeted with a togglable V7 on Midjourney’s website and, if you’re a member of Midjourney’s Discord server, on its Discord chatbot. In the web app, you can quickly select the model from the drop-down menu next to the “version” label.
Midjourney CEO David Holz described V7 as a “totally different architecture” in a post on X.
“V7 is […] much smarter with text prompts,” Holz continued in an announcement on Discord. “[I]mage prompts look fantastic, image quality is noticeably higher with beautiful textures, and bodies, hands, and objects of all kinds have significantly better coherence on all details.”
V7 is available in two flavors, Turbo and Relax — the former of which is more costly to run — and powers a new tool called Draft Mode that renders images at 10x the speed and half the cost of the standard mode. Draft images are lower-quality than standard-mode images, but can be enhanced and re-rendered with a click of the mouse.
We’re now beginning the alpha-test phase of our new V7 image Model. It’s our smartest, most beautiful, most coherent model yet. Give it a shot and expect updates every week or two for the next two months. pic.twitter.com/Ogqt0fgiY7
— Midjourney (@midjourney) April 4, 2025
A number of Midjourney capabilities aren’t available yet for V7, according to Holz, including image upscaling and retexturing. Those will arrive in the near future, he said — possibly as soon as within two months.
“This is an entirely new model with unique strengths and probably a few weaknesses” Holz wrote on Discord. “[W]e want to learn from you what it’s good and bad at, but definitely keep in mind it may require different styles of prompting. So play around a bit.”
In my brief testing, V7 adhered reasonably well to the prompts I gave it. Granted, I didn’t have time to really put the model through the ringer.
Midjourney is an unusual operation. Started in 2022 by Holz, who co-founded PC peripheral company Leap Motion, it hasn’t taken a dime of outside money.
In late 2023, Midjourney was reportedly expecting to bring in around $200 million in revenue. Recently, the San Francisco-based firm said that it was establishing a hardware team to work on undisclosed projects, and it continues to train previously announced models for video and 3D object generation.
Several lawsuits accuse Midjourney of infringing on the rights of millions of artists by training AI tools on images scraped from the web without the consent of the images’ creators.
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Amazon is introducing a new “Recaps” feature for Kindle users to help them recall plot points and character arcs before picking up the latest book in a series. While the company’s press release for the new feature doesn’t mention AI, Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch that recaps are AI-generated.
“We use technology, including GenAI and Amazon moderators, to create short recaps of books that accurately reflect book content,” Amazon spokesperson Ale Iraheta said in an emailed statement.
Users have taken to Reddit to share their concerns about the use of AI for the feature, with some questioning how accurate recaps will be. Although the company has said that it ensures recaps accurately reflect content, TechCrunch has asked for more information about the process.
Kindle device users in the United States can now view short recaps for books they’ve either purchased or borrowed for thousands of best-selling English-language e-books in series. Amazon plans to bring the recaps feature to the Kindle app for iOS soon.
To access recaps, users need to be on the latest Kindle software. Users can check if a series has a recap by looking for the “View Recaps” button on the series page in their Kindle Library or through the “View Recaps” option within the series grouping three-dot menu.
Before you can read the recap, you will be warned that it includes spoilers about major plot points and characters. Once you acknowledge this, you will be taken to the recap.
“By adding a new level of convenience to series reading, the Recaps feature enables readers to dive deeper into complex worlds and characters without losing the joy of discovery, all while ensuring an uninterrupted reading experience across every genre,” Amazon wrote in the blog post.
The company says recaps are available for all sorts of series, from epic fantasy series to mystery thrillers, including trending titles and longtime favorites.
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OpenAI’s new image-generation feature is on track to be one of the company’s most popular product launches ever.
According to Brad Lightcap, who oversees day-to-day operations and global deployment at OpenAI, over 130 million users have generated more than 700 million images since the new image generator launched in ChatGPT last week.
“[W]e appreciate your patience as we try to serve everyone,” Lightcap wrote in a post on X on Thursday. “[The] team continues to work around the clock.”
Lightcap added that India is now the fastest-growing ChatGPT market.
OpenAI’s new image generator, which launched for all ChatGPT users earlier this week, went viral for its controversial ability to create realistic Ghibli-style photos. It’s been a mixed blessing for OpenAI, leading to millions of new signups for ChatGPT while also greatly straining the company’s capacity.
According to CEO Sam Altman, the popularity of the image generator has led to product delays and temporarily degraded services as OpenAI works to scale up infrastructure to meet demand.
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Spotify announced Gen AI ads, among other changes to its advertising business, at an event in New York City on Thursday. Notably, the company introduced a new programmatic offering, the Spotify Ad Exchange (SAX), which allows advertisers to reach Spotify’s logged-in users via real-time auctions.
Expanding on the SAX news, Spotify said it inked new partnerships with Google’s demand-side platform, Dispay & Video 360, and Magnite, with Yahoo DSP, Adform, and others to come “soon.” The Trade Desk is also supported. SAX will offer “full addressability” and measurement capabilities, the company said.
Partners will initially be able to advertise within Spotify’s audio, video, and display formats across music, with podcast support on the way. SAX will be available in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, Brazil, and Mexico.
In another major announcement, the company said it’s integrating AI into its advertising offerings by allowing marketers to use Gen AI to create scripts and voiceovers for their audio ads using Spotify Ads Manager in the U.S. and Canada.
Spotify says the use of its AI tools will come at no additional cost to advertisers.
The changes were pitched to marketers as a way to reach the coveted Gen Z demographic, who access the streaming service throughout the day, not just when they’re engaged directly with the app and looking at the screen. The company touted that it now has over 251 million Gen Z users on its service.
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