[fwlr]

We’ve had, what, over two years of “basically free” image generation? (Dall-E 1 was Jan 21.) All the major players (OpenAI, Microsoft, Stability, Midjourney) offer free image generation and you only pay for large amounts.

There is a ton of momentum behind the general public’s belief and perception that image generation is free for small uses and cheap for large uses. Most of the other players can afford to keep those losing prices for a long time, too. I think it’s going to be an uphill battle to charge for image generation at amounts that turn a profit. I wouldn’t rule out a more creative way of monetizing it, but the obvious routes look unlikely.

[revelio]

Midjourney has stopped offering free generation. I made all of three or four images and now it is saying they don't have capacity for free trials anymore.

[Turing_Machine]

Not having enough capacity is not the same thing as running out of money, though. If the number of users is increasing rapidly (and there's every reason to believe that it is) it could just be that they're not able to spin up new GPUs fast enough to keep up with the increasing demand.

I've noticed that they've recently rolled out some new features (e.g., "/describe") that were at first limited to the higher tiers, but after a short time of evaluating the increased GPU load, were enabled for the lower tiers as well.

To me, that seems to indicate "can't install GPUs fast enough" rather than "running out of money", but of course it's just an indication.

I believe their stated reason for getting rid of the free trial accounts (temporarily, they said) was that people were using bots to register hundreds of sockpuppet accounts to get the freebies. Perhaps they'll come back when and if they can deploy some effective anti-bot measures.