Wagner James Au / New World Notes

The sharp eyes of New World Notes' image curator Cajsa Lilliehook caught what looks to be a pretty major breakthrough (or first step toward disaster, depending on your point of view): The Bulwark, a major US news analysis publication, is using Midjourney to create illustrations for their articles — and crediting Midjourney as the image source. (As opposed to, say, an actual human illustrator.) From a cursory search, this seems to be the first example of Midjourney used for a non-tech, non-grassroots illustration by a professional publication that would normally pay a graphic artist and/or image bank like GettyImages or Shutterstock for work like this. 

So this is notable! Also notable: It's not very good. Meant to illustrate Trump's questionable legal defense fund, the image doesn't convey any of that context at all, and actually looks more like a pro-Trump graphic. (Except, that is, the "Save America" slogan is washed out by the background — a sloppy look, whatever your political perspective.) In other words, a human illustrator would have done a much better job.

But then again, hiring a human is a lot more costly.

I've actually considered using Midjourney for images in New World Notes posts, rather than risking a nastygram from Getty Images or whoever. Fortunately Second Life and other metaverse platforms I usually cover are notably more chill about IP rights regarding screenshots.

Then again, as I've reported recently, I don't think it's an either/or situation where Midjourney and other AI image generators will replace human artists entirely. Rather, Midjourney will best serve as yet another technical tool in the human illustrator's kit, giving them a base from which to curate and improve on. That very thing seems to be happening with the Bulwark: This article's image also used Midjourney, but is a composite of that plus a photo from GettyImages; in other words, a photo taken by a human, with a Midjourney image curated by a human, and then composited by a human.