Midjourney could be coming to Grok soon — Elon Musk is in talks with the AI image platform
What could possibly go wrong?
Since February, Elon Musk has been slowly teasing a collaboration between Grok — the intelligent chatbot created by Musk’s xAI and available on the social platform X — and Midjourney.
If successful, this could see Midjourney’s powerful image generation capabilities integrated directly into Grok. Now, X users have found more evidence in the source code of Grok that further cements the idea of this partnership.
Information is scarce and no formal confirmation has been posted by either Midjourney or X but developer news service TestingCatalog News found a reference to ‘Midjourney’ in the source code for Grok posted to Github.
Grok + Midjourney — what’s this about?
While the critics of AI-powered social content are many, the fact remains that having a chatbot capable of generating multiple social media posts on any topic using a simple prompt is a lucrative concept for influencers and businesses alike.
Grok already does that, but with the addition of Midjourney, it could also produce high-quality visuals to support those social media posts.
Using a different AI model to create visuals isn't that different to what OpenAI, Google and Meta do, each using a specific AI image generation model but prompted by their respective chatbots.
In February 2024, Musk was participating in an X Spaces conversation when a user called MishaFitton asked him if Midjourney was going to make an appearance in X anytime soon. “We are in some interesting discussions with Midjourney,” replied Musk. “One way or another, we will enable AI generation on this platform [X].”
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It’s hardly a surprise. Elon Musk has often been seen sharing similar views with David Holz, the founder of Midjourney. The two have even supported each other’s claims and predictions publicly on social media and during conferences. Given that Grok doesn’t feature any AI image generation capabilities of its own, an API integration with Midjourney could benefit both platforms.
What are the hints this is coming soon?
BREAKING It seems like a partnership between X and Midjouney has been achieved 👀Grok might be able to use Midjourney for image generation in the future. https://t.co/AaZ10FO2UF pic.twitter.com/ue0VEz04J4June 19, 2024
On June 20, 2024, an AI-focused media outlet called TestingCatalog News found something in the source code of Grok’s standalone version in GitHub. Taking to their social account on X, TestingCatalog wrote, “It seems like a partnership between X and Midjourney has been achieved.” This was followed by a snippet from Grok’s source code that clearly showed the word “midjourney”.
After that, TestingCatalog wrote in another post: “To add a bit more context: This is what currently exists in the code of the standalone Grok version.” This happened just in time for the full release of Grok 1.5.
While the partnership between Grok and Midjourney seems likely given recent events, nothing has been formally announced by either company. While it’s not unnatural for such things to be kept under a tight lid until the last moment, any predictions made right now might edge closer to speculation.
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Ritoban Mukherjee is a freelance journalist from West Bengal, India whose work on cloud storage, web hosting, and a range of other topics has been published on Tom's Guide, TechRadar, Creative Bloq, IT Pro, Gizmodo, Medium, and Mental Floss.