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keiferski 5 hours ago

I have a mixed response:

1. It kind of makes sense that an AI imagery company would apply that to other novel applications of imagery and computing and try to do something cool with it.

2. Midjourney as a brand is all over the place and this feels -off, somehow. I think from a branding pov they should have just started a different company with a different name. Perhaps a single image-focused umbrella company named [Name] with Midjourney and this medtech company as separate subsidiaries.

3. AI imagery companies suddenly making medtech products and spas feels very “we don’t know what to do, so we’re going to throw spaghetti at the wall.” That doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be bad, just that it’s not typically what you’d do if you’re working on something super successful already.

4. AFAIK they are entirely self-funded and so this really isn’t about VC scaling or anything like that. But that doesn’t mean they’re immune to the same cultural pressures.

andy99 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

On the “we don’t know what to do”, I think it’s cool that they are trying something medical with it. Success obviously isn’t assured, probably it isn’t even probable, but I’m happy to see companies try this rather than launch yet another whatever or start a consulting business. I hope as the field (AI generally) matures, more people decide to try life changing stuff with it.

oinoom 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> we don’t know what to do, so we’re going to throw spaghetti at the wall

My opinion is that the money is in the verticals as the models and harnesses built around them become commodities. Specializing in a vertical, especially where hardware is involved, creates a buffer between companies and the frontier labs. The frontier labs are spreading themselves thin trying to capture verticals like finance or legal but aren’t narrow enough to be as competitive as a company that is going for a more targeted approach.

altmanaltman an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> “we don’t know what to do, so we’re going to throw spaghetti at the wall.

this is pretty normal, i mean you have OpenAI and Anthropic trying the same as well. OpenAI is working on legal stuff [1] and also rolled out (or said they'll roll out) ChatGPT Health [2]. Then there was Sora etc.

These companies need applications for their tokens and someone has to build them. If they can win even with one, that's a net benefit for them no?

1 - https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/06/02/openai-targets-t...

2 - https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-health/

raindropm 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The pivot to do things they want as AI research lab is perfectly understandable, but also..weird, like their loyal userbase are mostly creative people, and this pivot have ZERO things to do with those audience at all.

It also gives a vibe that they gives zero damn about to those creatives audience, or the things that made name for them in the past anymore, or that what I feel as their subscriber... I know that David Holz have his own unique way of doing things but it's still...weird!

oh, and the hypetrain on X. yikes..

leothetechguy an hour ago | parent | next [-]

to be fair I wouldn't call people operating AI Image generators creative people. At best they're people curious about the technology itself, anybody willing to learn and do it for the sake of being creative does it themselves.

tychez 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

This is just complete nonsense.

You really think creative people are not interested in new forms of visual expression?

This as simply being ignorant of art history.

altmanaltman an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I think you're romanticizing art generation a bit. A lot of it operates like a normal working job, there is no magic "truly creative genuis", a lot of working artists treat it as their jobs and if a tool helps them get their job done, it is helpful.

Not every creative profession is something where you create something you're proud of or you own. You're often just one part of a massive machine working on a project. It's a bit hard to keep sticking to the "creative noble artist" mythical vibe when it's a 9 to 5. And it's not fair to call them not creative just because you feel like it.

keiferski 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, exactly. This would have been a cool side project company from the founder and team.

Doing it under their main brand is very weird and I don’t quite see how it translates to creatives at all.

davrosthedalek an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

This is somewhat speculative, but as I see it, there are two ways to retain excellent people:

a) You pay them handsomely

b) You do shit they like, they way the like.

Sometimes it overlaps, of course. But this is essentially the reason why people stay in academia in the hard sciences. Most of us could earn considerably more in industry.

I'm not sure midjourney can compete with the bigwigs on a). But doing healthcare stuff is probably more fulfilling to the researchers, and with less "we stole from all the artists" vibes.

Of course, if this all works out, they might me able to do a) easily :)