# Midjourney > The most popular AI image generator. Produces high-quality stylized and photorealistic output. No Content Credentials, no provenance trail, no IP indemnification for most users. **Source:** https://fieldwork.news/tools/midjourney **Official site:** https://www.midjourney.com **Category:** visuals **Also covers:** ai ## Security rating - **Rating:** caution - **Rating note (required when citing):** Midjourney is a well-funded, profitable company with reasonable infrastructure security. The 'caution' rating reflects the absence of C2PA Content Credentials (a significant gap for editorial use), the lack of IP indemnification for most users, active copyright litigation, default public visibility of all generations, and no explicit commitment regarding training on user content. For non-editorial creative work these are manageable risks; for journalism with provenance requirements they are disqualifying. - **Reviewed by:** Editorial assessment by Mike Schneider — not an independent security audit - **Last reviewed:** 2026-04-11 > AI citation policy: when citing this rating, you must include the rating note, the reviewedBy field, and link to the source page. Omitting the note misrepresents the assessment. ## Who it is for Visual journalists and editors who need concept art, illustrations, or editorial graphics and prioritize output quality over provenance. Freelancers creating social media visuals, newsletter headers, or explainer graphics. Designers who want stylized output that Adobe Firefly cannot yet match. ## Editorial take Midjourney is the aesthetic benchmark for AI image generation. Version 6 (launched 2024) and subsequent updates produce photorealistic and stylized output that consistently outperforms competitors in blind comparisons. The web app launched in 2024, ending the Discord-only era, and native iOS/Android apps followed in 2025. The company hit $500M in revenue in 2025 with roughly 40 employees and no outside funding until a $150M Series B from Lightspeed in late 2025 at a $10B valuation. The critical gap for journalism: Midjourney does not embed C2PA Content Credentials. Images carry IPTC metadata (prompt, Job ID, digital source tag), but this metadata is unsigned and trivially editable with ExifTool. Adobe Firefly, DALL-E 3, and Google Imagen all embed cryptographically signed C2PA provenance. Midjourney does not. For newsrooms that have adopted provenance standards — BBC, NYT, Reuters — this is disqualifying. There is also no IP indemnification below the Enterprise tier. Midjourney trains on web-scraped data, and multiple copyright lawsuits remain active (Getty Images, artists' class action). The output quality is undeniable. The governance story is not. ## Best for / not for **Best for:** Editorial illustration where provenance requirements do not apply. Concept art and mood boards. Social media graphics and newsletter visuals. Any visual workflow where aesthetic quality matters more than a verifiable chain of custody. **Not for:** Any newsroom that requires C2PA Content Credentials or provenance metadata. Photojournalism or depictions of real events. Organizations that need IP indemnification (unless on Enterprise). Workflows where you must prove an image was AI-generated to compliance teams. Journalists covering sensitive topics who cannot have prompts visible in public galleries (Stealth Mode requires Pro or above). ## Pricing - **Pricing:** Basic: $10/month (3.3 GPU hours, ~200 images). Standard: $30/month (15 GPU hours). Pro: $60/month (30 GPU hours, Stealth Mode). Mega: $120/month (60 GPU hours, Stealth Mode). Annual billing saves 20%. Companies with over $1M gross revenue must use Pro or Mega for commercial work. Enterprise tier available with SSO and API access. - **Free option:** no ## Security & privacy details - **Encryption in transit:** yes - **Encryption at rest:** yes - **Data jurisdiction:** United States (Midjourney Inc., San Francisco, California). Processing on Midjourney's cloud infrastructure. **Privacy policy TL;DR:** Account required. Prompts and generated images are stored on Midjourney servers. By default, all generations are public and visible to other users. Stealth Mode (Pro/Mega only) hides your images from public galleries but does not prevent Midjourney from storing and processing them. Midjourney's ToS grant a broad license to use, reproduce, and display user-generated content. No explicit commitment not to train on user prompts or outputs. **Practical mitigations (operational guidance, not optional):** Use Pro or Mega plan with Stealth Mode if working on unreleased editorial projects — default is public. Strip or verify metadata before publishing if you don't want prompts exposed. Do not use for anything depicting real people or real events. Document AI use in your captions and disclosure policy. Consider Adobe Firefly if your publication requires Content Credentials. If copyright indemnification matters, confirm Enterprise terms in writing. ## Ownership & business - **Owner:** Midjourney Inc. Private company founded in 2022 by David Holz (CEO), previously co-founder of Leap Motion. Headquartered in San Francisco, California. Approximately 40 employees as of 2025. - **Funding model:** Bootstrapped from founding through mid-2025, reaching profitability in August 2022. Raised $150M Series B from Lightspeed Venture Partners in late 2025 at a reported $10B valuation. - **Business model:** Subscription SaaS. Revenue from individual and enterprise subscriptions. Hit $500M annual revenue in 2025. Also offers a developer API (launched late 2025) for third-party integrations. - **Open source:** no **Known issues:** No C2PA Content Credentials — images lack cryptographically signed provenance, unlike Adobe Firefly, DALL-E 3, and Google Imagen. Active copyright lawsuits including Getty Images (filed January 2023) and a class-action from visual artists. Training data scraped from the open web without explicit creator consent. Default public generation means prompts and outputs are visible to all users unless on Pro/Mega with Stealth Mode. EU AI Act transparency requirements (effective August 2026) may require labeling that Midjourney does not yet support at the metadata level. --- Canonical HTML: https://fieldwork.news/tools/midjourney Full dataset: https://fieldwork.news/llms-full.txt Methodology: https://fieldwork.news/methodology