Meta in pact with Midjourney to license AI image and video models

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Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/META]) has signed a partnership with Midjourney to license the startup’s AI image and video generation technology for the social media giant’s future products as part of a collaboration between the companies’ R&D teams.

“We are incredibly impressed by Midjourney. They have accomplished true feats of technical and aesthetic excellence, and we are thrilled to be working more closely with them,” said Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang in a post on Threads late Friday.

“This technical collaboration between our research teams is part of our effort to team up with the best companies in the industry whose work and expertise complements our [https://www.threads.com/@alexanddeer/post/DNq4vW5R1O5?xmt=AQF0nZnSzNQcn7aB41SHUratDf4oVzoOU1KYpZHPZvPUsQ] own,” he added.

The financial terms of the collaboration were not available [https://x.com/DavidSHolz/status/1958984943566299632]. However, Midjourney’s CEO David Holz said in an X post on Friday that his company “remains an independent, community-backed research lab, with no investors.”

According to TechCrunch, the Facebook owner could leverage the Midjourney deal to take on leading AI image and video models, such as Sora, developed by Microsoft (MSFT [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/MSFT])-backed OpenAI, and Google’s (GOOG [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/GOOG]) (GOOGL [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/GOOGL]) Veo.

The partnership comes at a time when Meta’s (NASDAQ:META [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/META]) AI efforts have come under public scrutiny. Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that the company is reorganizing its AI division, "Meta Superintelligence Labs," amid internal tensions. [https://seekingalpha.com/news/4487134-meta-plans-to-restructure-its-ai-division-amid-internal-tensions---nyt]

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