Summary

Midjourney v6 has removed the capability to generate UX/UI and website design mockups, leading to mixed feelings within the design community about the future of web design and AI's role in it.

Abstract

The latest version of Midjourney, v6, has been released with significant updates, including improved prompt accuracy and text drawing ability. However, it no longer supports the creation of UX/UI designs, which has sparked a range of emotions among designers. The author, who has a background in graphic design and has designed over 300 websites, expresses both excitement and sadness at the AI's capabilities and its implications for the future of web design. While previous versions of Midjourney could produce interesting website design concepts, v6 seems to have intentionally disabled this feature, possibly to focus on image generation or due to the complexity of UX/UI design. The author speculates on the reasons behind this change and its impact on the job security of web designers, acknowledging that while this may temporarily slow the progress of AI in design, the technology is inevitable and designers must adapt to remain relevant.

Opinions

The author initially believed that creative work would remain a human domain, even after seeing AI's potential in the movie "iRobot."
The author was impressed by the AI-generated website designs but also felt a sense of loss, as the skill he spent years developing seemed to be becoming obsolete.
There is a concern that clients may soon generate their own AI designs, reducing the role of designers to mere customizers of AI-created concepts.
The author is skeptical about the future of "web designer" as a job title, considering the rapid advancements in AI.
Despite the initial shock, the author acknowledges that AI's role in design is progressing and that designers need to evolve with the technology.
The author views the removal of website mockup generation in Midjourney v6 as a possible strategic decision to leave UX/UI design to professionals, or perhaps a mistake that might be rectified in future updates.
The author believes that even if Midjourney does not reinstate this feature, other AI tools will likely fill the gap, continuing the trend of AI in web design conceptualization.
The author feels a sense of relief for the temporary reprieve given to designers but also recognizes the need for designers to adapt to the evolving landscape of design in the age of AI.

Midjourney v6 Removes the Ability to Create UX/UI and Website Designs

The latest default version of Midjourney (v6) no longer supports the creation of UX/UI mockups — and I’m not sure how to feel about it.

/imagine Six modern website mockup screens side by side — ar 3:1 — v 6.0

Midjourney Model Version 6 was released on December 20, 2023 (my bday is 12/21, Happy Birthday to me!)

It’s a huge update with many strengths over v5.2 — more accurate prompt following, longer prompts, improved text drawing ability, and improved upscalers — to name a few.

But this article isn’t about any of that.

While I’m currently the CEO of the SaaS marketing platform Builderall, I originally went to school for graphic design. Between 1999 and 2008, I designed over 300 websites— and I was really good.

I took pride in coming up with designs that weren’t just pretty, but that generated more sales or leads for the business. I loved coming up with design innovations, and then seeing those innovations start to spread throughout the design world.

Even after watching iRobot in 2004 (yes, I know there was a book, no I did not read it), I firmly believed that no matter how sophisticated ‘the robots’ became, the creative work would always be in the realm of us soft-brained humans.

You can imagine my shock when someone first showed me Midjourney and I realized that with a basic prompt, this simple AI tool would spit out remarkably nice website designs.

/imagine great UX/UI for product website with a high conversion rate — ar 9:16

Of course, none of these are polished enough to put web designers out of a job, but if I’m honest, there are some interesting concepts here. I would be proud of these if I had come up with them.

And, this is only the beginning. Surely these would only get better as the AI models improved.

Seeing these generations was exciting. We are standing on the precipice of serious progress when it comes to the capabilities of artificial intelligence.

But I also felt sad. Even though I don’t work as a designer anymore, it felt like this skill that I spent so many years developing was now becoming obsolete due to AI.

How long before clients come up with their own AI generations and designers are just customizing concepts created by AI?

If Midjourney can generate reasonably good website mockups today, will “web designer” even be a job in 3 years?

Then came v6.

If we run the same exact prompt above, but in Midjourney v6, the results are completely different.

/imagine great UX/UI for product website with a high conversion rate — ar 9:16

It’s like Midjourney v6 has completely lost the ability to understand what a website mockup is.

At first, I thought they would fix this while it was in alpha, but v6 became the default model on February 14, 2024.

I’ve tried lots of variations and it seems like there is no way to get v6 to generate a website mockup. It completely ignores the word website and defaults to generating a photo that includes whatever it finds in the rest of the prompt.

/imagine website design for a luxury kitchen brand based in Miami, FL

For the prompt above, rather than generate a “website” for a luxury kitchen brand, it just gives me a photo of a “luxury kitchen.”

I decided to use the /shorten command to see how mj was parsing the prompt. If you’re unfamiliar, the shorten command analyzes your prompt by breaking it down into smaller units known as tokens. Tokens are phrases or words that function as the building blocks that help the Midjourney bot make sense of the input and create the desired visual output.

As you can see below, the word ‘website’ is the second most important ‘token’ in the prompt.

So even though it registers the tokens, it seems like there was a deliberate change to this latest version of Midjourney that specifically blocks it from generating website mockups.

Is this good news for designers?

Did the folks at Midjourney realize the world of UX/UI is impossibly complex and they are getting out so the real professionals can do their job?

Does this mean web designers will have more job security moving forward?

If I had to guess: No, and No.

I don’t know why v6 has removed this ability. Maybe it was a mistake and it will be fixed in a 6.1 release. Or maybe they want Midjourney to be purely about image generation and UX/UI doesn’t fit that description.

In either case, we know the tech exists so there’s really no going back. Computers can generate website designs and they will only get better as time goes on.

If it doesn’t come back to Midjourney, other tools will offer the same functionality, and people will use those for web design conceptualization.

So, I’m a little torn.

I feel like Midjourney v6 losing this functionality might slow the progress of using AI for websites and UX/UI, but I also appreciate what feels like a temporary “stay of execution” for designers around the world.

Good designers will use the additional time to adapt and position themselves to succeed with whatever the next iteration of “designer” looks like in the future.