Both take zero technical knowledge to use the base models via first-party online hosts, but Midjourney is superior there.
SD offers a lot more capacity beyond what is available from the first-party online host, though, while with Midjourney, that’s where it begins and ends, there is nothing more.
> and doesn’t require a high-end gaming PC to run it.
Neither does SD (I use a couple-year-old business laptop with a 4GB Nvidia card; no sane person would call it a “highend gaming PC” to run A1111 locally, and there are options besides running it locally.)
I wonder why nobody is talking about Bing Image Creator
https://www.bing.com/images/create
which uses some much more advanced version of Dall-E 2 in the background (so Dall-E 2.5? 3?), while being completely free to use. It can produce some pretty mind blowing results with quite simple prompts, although apparently not as impressive as Midjourney V5. A few examples:
hyperrealistic https://www.bing.com/images/create/hyperrealistic/644fa0c48f...
an allegory for femininity https://www.bing.com/images/create/an-allegory-for-femininit...
portrait of a strange woman, hyperrealistic https://www.bing.com/images/create/portrait-of-a-strange-wom...
allegory of logic, portrait https://www.bing.com/images/create/allegory-of-logic2c-portr...
her strange bedfellow https://www.bing.com/images/create/her-strange-bedfellow/644...
Mrs fox https://www.bing.com/images/create/mrs-fox/6446e85a32134e649...
inside view https://www.bing.com/images/create/inside-view/6446f1dc573f4...
in the midst of it all https://www.bing.com/images/create/in-the-midst-of-it-all/64...
strange gal https://www.bing.com/images/create/strange-gal/6446e2a2ea7a4...
sighting of a strange entity in an abandoned library https://www.bing.com/images/create/sighting-of-a-strange-ent...
sleeping marble woman next to a wall of strange pictures inside an abandoned museum, close-up https://www.bing.com/images/create/sleeping-marble-woman-nex...
sculpture of a woman posing next to a wall of strange pictures, close-up https://www.bing.com/images/create/sculpture-of-a-woman-posi...
Easter https://www.bing.com/images/create/easter/643ae4968aff432684...
Christmas on board a spaceship, DSLR photograph https://www.bing.com/images/create/christmas-on-board-a-spac...
an angel, dancing to heavy metal https://www.bing.com/images/create/an-angel2c-dancing-to-hea...
Saturday afternoon in the streets of a buzzing cyberpunk city, photo-realistic, DSLR https://www.bing.com/images/create/saturday-afternoon-in-the...
The Dogfather https://www.bing.com/images/create/the-dogfather/6441d18950b...
the unlikely guest https://www.bing.com/images/create/the-unlikely-guest/644446...
Strange pictures in an abandoned museum https://www.bing.com/images/create/strange-pictures-in-an-ab...
strange woman in an abandoned museum, close-up https://www.bing.com/images/create/strange-woman-in-an-aband...
strange woman in an abandoned museum, strange pictures in the background https://www.bing.com/images/create/strange-woman-in-an-aband...
a wall of strange pictures in an abandoned museum in Atlantis, close-up https://www.bing.com/images/create/a-wall-of-strange-picture...
female sculpture in an abandoned museum in Atlantis, close-up https://www.bing.com/images/create/female-sculpture-in-an-ab...
the unlikely guest https://www.bing.com/images/create/the-unlikely-guest/644490...
an unlikely guest of the secret society in the lost city in a country without name, close-up https://www.bing.com/images/create/an-unlikely-guest-of-the-...
I think the quality of most of these pictures is far beyond what is achievable with Dall-E 2. One issue that still exists (though to s lesser extent) is the fact that faces have to cover a fairly large area of the image. Smaller faces look strange, e.g. here:
photograph of the unlikely guests https://www.bing.com/images/create/photograph-of-the-unlikel...
It is as if the model creates a good draft in low resolution, and another model scales it up, but the latter model doesn't know what a face is? (I have no idea how diffusion models actually work.)
Probably not the only factor but could be one.
https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/03/16/ai_art_copyright_...
So the images can also be used commercially, and this holds as much for Microsoft as for Midjourney. (Though note that Microsoft isn't denying the usage for commercial purposes, though they made it sound as if they did.)