Midjourney—the AI poster child for generating questionable “hyper-realistic” hands—just dropped a research paper on text models. Because when your core product is known for anatomical nightmares, why not wade into the literary abyss?
From Diffusion to Delusion: The “Creative” LLM Gambit
The paper introduces Diversified Direct Preference Optimization (DDPO), a method to make LLMs write less like a corporate HR email and more like a caffeinated MFA student. Key takeaways:
- Problem: Current LLMs churn out stories as predictable as a Netflix algorithm. Prompt: “Dog on the moon.” Output: “Loyal pupper saves Apollo mission (heart emoji).”
- “Solution”: DDPO weights rare-but-decent responses higher during training. Translation: They’re bribing the model to be quirky.
Trained on Reddit’s r/writingPrompts—a hub of Pulitzer-worthy gems like “Your cat is actually a Norse god”—it allegedly outperforms GPT-4o in “diversity.” Let’s pause while poets worldwide weep into their typewriters.
Why This Reeks of Hail Mary Energy
Midjourney’s pivot reeks of a company realizing that generating 50,000 variations of “cyberpunk elf” isn’t a sustainable business model. Their hardware rumors last summer? Crickets. Now, they’re dangling creative writing like it’s 2022 and we’re still impressed by ChatGPT’s sonnets. Enterprise use cases? Marketing teams will love replacing “innovative synergy” with “innovative and diverse synergy.” Game devs might salvage it for NPC dialogue, assuming they enjoy lore about moon dogs written by an AI trained on Reddit.
The Real Takeaway
This isn’t a breakthrough—it’s a bandage on the festering wound of LLM mediocrity. Sure, tweaking training weights might spawn marginally less robotic text, but let’s not confuse statistical deviation with creativity. Midjourney’s playing 4D chess: if AI art plateaus, why not fail upward into another overhyped domain? Next stop: AI-generated stand-up comedy. “Why did the LLM cross the road? DATA. IT WAS TRAINED ON DATA.” 🎤