Note: @clarinet occasionally modifies these notes to add/correct information, so these are not always exact copies of the notes available via Discord.

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📅 Midjourney Office Hours 2026-05-06

Current Priorities

Team is focused on two major development tracks:
- New aesthetics system for Midjourney.
- Expanded edit model capabilities.
Short office hours due to active work on an upcoming product release and other internal launches.

Aesthetics System (V8.2 Direction)

New aesthetics system aims to:
- Improve personalization accuracy.
- Produce more exciting and varied outputs.
- Reintroduce bolder and “weirder” visual styles.
Current testing suggests the model is capable of significantly stronger aesthetics than users currently see by default.
Team is actively tuning:
- Style balance.
- Weirdness levels.
- Personalization behavior.
Internal testing found sources of unwanted “weirdness” that are being corrected in upcoming revisions.
Multiple experimental versions already exist internally that are considered visually better than current public behavior.
David emphasized that:
- Major aesthetic improvements do not require a full V9 model.
- Users would likely notice aesthetic improvements more than raw model-size increases.

Examples of Internal Aesthetic Experiments

Internal generations include:
- Stylized penguin/bird characters.
- Long-eared foxes.
- Highly aestheticized monkeys and surreal creatures.
These outputs are described as:
- Difficult or impossible to prompt directly today.
- Emerging from deeper aesthetic behavior rather than literal prompting.
Goal is to expose more of this latent creative capability to users.

“Weirdness” Tuning

Team is debating how far to push stylistic experimentation.
Discussion centered around:
- Allowing more edgy/unusual generations.
- Avoiding outputs becoming unusably chaotic.
Grimes tested recent experimental builds and reportedly preferred the weirder direction.