Midjourney V8.1 becomes the default model

Midjourney V8.1 replaces V7 as the default model, offering native 2K HD generation, faster 4-second speeds, and improved text rendering.

After an alpha phase and several weeks of community feedback, Midjourney has switched its default model from V7 to V8.1.

The new version is designed to be smarter and more consistent, with improved adherence to detailed prompts and significantly better text rendering, a historical weakness of the platform. HD mode is the other major change: images are natively generated in 2K, without a separate upscale pass, with every pixel produced at full resolution from the first step. When activated, this mode doubles the image size and quadruples their resolution compared to V7. Speed is also a highlight, with generations announced at 4 seconds for standard definition and 12 seconds for HD, costing approximately 1.33 GPU minutes per HD image versus just under one minute for SD.

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