Midjourney AI Detection & Watermark Analysis

What is Midjourney?

Midjourney is an AI image generator known for its distinctive artistic aesthetic and high visual quality. The service operates primarily through Discord, where users enter text prompts in chat channels and receive generated images. Midjourney has built one of the largest creative AI communities, with its outputs widely recognized for strong composition, lighting, and rich color palettes.

The current version (v6, with v6.1 updates) produces photorealistic and artistic images. A web interface is also available alongside the original Discord workflow.

Midjourney Versions

Version 6 / 6.1

The current generation with improved photorealism, better prompt understanding, more accurate human anatomy, and longer prompt support.

Niji

A specialized model for anime and manga styles, developed in collaboration with Spellbrush.

Older Versions (v5, v4)

Still accessible for users who prefer earlier aesthetics. Each version has a distinctive visual style — v5 is more painterly with softer edges, v6 is more photorealistic.

Midjourney and Watermarks

Midjourney takes a notably minimal approach to content marking:

No Visible Watermark

Midjourney does not add visible watermarks to any outputs on any plan.

No Confirmed Invisible Watermark

Midjourney has not publicly confirmed any invisible watermarking system embedded in generated pixels. The "Midjourney Watermark" label sometimes referenced in AI detection contexts refers to potential spectral-level patterns, but Midjourney has not officially documented or confirmed this.

No C2PA Content Credentials

Midjourney does not embed C2PA metadata in generated images. Unlike Adobe Firefly or OpenAI's DALL-E, there is no cryptographic provenance data attached to Midjourney outputs.

No SynthID

Midjourney does not use Google's SynthID. SynthID is exclusive to Google DeepMind services.

Minimal Metadata

Midjourney images downloaded from Discord contain standard Discord CDN metadata. The original generation prompt is not embedded in the image file itself.

This makes Midjourney one of the least marked major AI image generators — alongside Leonardo.ai. Detection relies entirely on analyzing the image content.

Detecting Midjourney Images

Without watermarks or provenance metadata, detection depends on content analysis:

• Statistical patterns — Midjourney's diffusion process leaves characteristic pixel distributions
• Style signatures — Midjourney has recognizable color grading, lighting tendencies, and texture handling
• Version-specific artifacts — Each Midjourney version has slightly different generation characteristics
• Semantic analysis — AI detectors can recognize common Midjourney composition patterns

Midjourney's distinctive aesthetic is both a strength (recognizable quality) and a weakness (recognizable to detectors trained on Midjourney data).

Midjourney Pricing

• Basic ($10/mo): ~200 generations/month
• Standard ($30/mo): 15 hours fast generation, unlimited relaxed
• Pro ($60/mo): 30 hours fast, stealth mode (images not visible in community gallery)
• Mega ($120/mo): 60 hours fast generation

All plans produce images without watermarks. Pro and Mega plans include stealth mode for private generation.

Interface

Midjourney operates differently from most AI generators:

• Discord — Primary interface, generation through chat commands (/imagine)
• Web app — Available at midjourney.com for image generation and gallery browsing
• No API — Midjourney does not currently offer official API access, which limits programmatic integration
• Community galleries — Generated images are public by default (private on Pro/Mega plans with stealth mode)

Testing Midjourney Images

Upload Midjourney images in our Arena to test them against multiple AI detectors. Since Midjourney has no watermarks or metadata, detection results show how well detectors identify Midjourney through pure content analysis. The Leaderboard tracks which detectors are most accurate against Midjourney outputs.