The Verge reported on the thirtieth (local time) that Midjourney has stopped the free trial service of its artificial intelligence (AI) image generator ‘Midjourney’.

The superficial reason is ‘an enormous number of individuals requesting a one-time account to get free images, mainly from how-to videos in China’, but in point of fact, it’s estimated that it has nothing to do with the recent surge in viral images.

In recent weeks, deepfake images created using Midjourney, equivalent to images of former US President Donald Trump being arrested and Pope Francis wearing a stylish coat, have circulated and garnered attention. This raised concerns that image-generating AI, including Midjourney, might be abused to maliciously spread false information.

David Holtz, CEO of Midjourney, said, “The free trial version doesn’t have access to the most recent version 5 of Midjourney. The newest deepfake image used to create it’s believed to be version 5.” said.

Chan Park, cpark@aitimes.com