Mastering AI Generated Art - Prerequisites

Welcome! On Sept 5th the Voice and AI conference will hold a series of workshops. If you are attending the Mastering AI Generated Art workshop, you are in the right place. To let us hit the ground running and starting creating some amazing AI art ASAP, there are several prerequisites

Video version of these instructions:


We will be using the following software

• Discord
• MidJourney
• DreamStudio (Stable Diffusion)
• Leonardo.ai

Here's what you need to do to get this software setup for the workshop

Discord
We will use Discord to collaborate e.g. share images and prompts during the workshop. And, MidJourney requires Discord.

1. Setup Discord
• If you already have a Discord account, simply go to: https://bit.ly/aiart2023 and join the Discord. Go to step #2
• Go to Discord.com and click on "Open Discord in your browser"
• Enter a username and your birthday on the next screen (Discord requires this)
• On the "Create your Discord server" menu, choose the bottom option "Have an invite already? Join a server"
• Enter https://discord.com/invite/q7Bp7CvjT as the invite link
• Enter an e-mail and create a password
• Click on the confirmation link in your e-mail - then click on "Continue to Discord"
• If you are asked to download the Discord app, you can. Alternatively you can go to discord.com and click "Open Discord" on the top right
• Click on the AI Art - Voice and AI Icon on the top left - you can view the 👋︱welcome-to-ai-art-class channel which has a summary of these instructions. Complete step #2 and you will get the full access you need for the workshop
• 

2. Send me your name, Discord username and e-mail via the form at: https://forms.gle/QikMy3YUre5EZBg17 - I will give your account the necessary permissions on Discord and I'll send you a reminder e-mail to fulfill all these prerequisites

MidJourney
MidJourney will be the tool we use the most in the workshop. It's an amazing AI art tool and many consider it the best tool

1. Create a MidJourney account - Note: unfortunately MidJourney no longer offers free trials. The cheapest plan is $10/month. Sign up for that. You can cancel after the workshop but I bet you will keep it
• Go to https://www.midjourney.com/
• Click on the green "Join Beta" button on the bottom right
• You will be invited to the MidJourney Discord server
• Once in the server, choose one of the NEWCOMER rooms - they have names like newbies-60, newbies-110, newbies-140 etc
• type in "/subscribe" and hit return
• 
• Click the "Manage Account" button
• Purchase a plan (I suggest starting with the $10 month plan). Once finished return to the MidJourney Discord
2. Setup MidJourney for private DMs (direct messages): You can use MidJourney on their Discord but it is crowded and busy. A much better way is to setup a way to DM MidJourney
• To enable the private DM's you need to make a security setting change. This is OK on the MidJourney discord (I recommend keeping this off for most other Discord servers). On the top left (where you see abstract MidJourney image), select the drop down and choose "Privacy Settings"
• 
• Turn on "Direct Messages"
• 
• Find any message from "MidJourney Bot" and click on the green "Midjourney Bot" name
• In the popup, say something like "hello" in the message box at the bottom
• 
• This will open up a direct message with the MidJourney bot.
• Send a direct message to the MidJourney bot to create an AI image
• type in /imagine and hit the tab key
• enter what you want your image to be - something like "a cool spaceship on the way to mars"
• 
• MidJourney will create an AI image for you! It will look different than this (different every time)
• 
3. Congratulations you are all setup with MidJourney. Lots of steps but you did it! The hard part is done!
• Here are some additional guides/info if you get stuck
• https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/midjourney-discord
• https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/direct-messages

DreamStudio
DreamStudio is a web interface to Stable Diffusion, a leading open source AI art generator

• Go to https://dreamstudio.ai/
• Click on "Get Started" or "Try DreamStudio for free"
• Click on the login button and create an account
• You can start with the free credits they give you and if necesary buy more credits as needed

Leonardo.ai
Leonardo AI is another Stable Diffusion tool. It is very different and more powerful than DreamStudio though

• Go to https://leonardo.ai/
• Click on "Create an account"
• Since you are new to Leonardo AI, you are not whitelisted. Enter a name and e-mail
• You will be whitelisted within 24 hours or less typically. You can also join their Discord or Facebook group which accelerates this - details are in the registration process

Voila! You are done! I will see you in DC on September 5th.

In the mean time, please do start playing with these tools if you like!