Kantrell Betancourt Talks New Midjourney Book, AI As Assistive Tech In Interview

In a press release issued in mid-April, community builder startup Groundfloor announced an in-person event with acclaimed artist and author Kantrell Betancourt focused on “exploring the fusion of AI and art.” The 90-minute get-together was exclusively for Groundfloor members, which the company held at its space in Los Angeles.

Regular reads of this column should recall I’ve covered Groundfloor a few times in recent years, notably centering on conversations with company co-founder and chief executive officer Jamie Snedden.

In an interview with me conducted in late April, Betancourt explained her latest book, called Dreaming In Digital, was conceived and developed to be a step-by-step guide on how to use Midjourney. On its website, Midjourney describes itself as an “independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species” comprised of “a small self-funded team focused on design, human infrastructure, and AI.” The company employs 11 full-time staff members alongside “an incredible set of advisors.” As Betancourt’s work alludes, Midjourney is a tool powered by artificial intelligence, with which people can create original pieces of art.

“It took a while to get grounding on how to use the text prompts to get the results I wanted,” Betancourt told me of discovering Midjourney and her inspiration for writing the how-to book. “From my own experience, I wanted to help others jump right in. I feel a lot of people don’t know about it… I came across it on Instagram, so if your algorithms aren’t putting this tech in front of you, you may not know that it even exists.”

Betancourt said Midjourney is trying its best to make its platform more accessible to more people, telling me the company has an alpha program wherein users can create directly via the website instead of needing to log into Discord. She added Midjourney is a great way to become exposed to AI, noting that her experiences began in 2022 but that last year really was the time she “made my mark.” She praised Midjourney’s tools as “so amazing” and went on to tell me “what motivated me was to let everyone know this is here and, as a lover of art and creativity, I wanted to spread the word that people can do this themselves too.”

The notion that “people can do this themselves too” is a poignant one in an accessibility context. Betancourt said she believes AI-based tools such as Midjourney can be tremendously empowering for the disability community; they allows disabled people to “create using typing and typing in what they imagine and saving the image.” Betancourt further noted Midjourney has speech-to-text functionality for those who cannot type, saying disabled people can interact with Midjourney virtually any way they interact with computers—be it typing, speech, Braille, and more. What’s more, Betancourt keenly emphasized a key aspect of Midjourney’s allure to her is the company allows creators to retain possession over copyright; this means a person’s material is theirs alone.

For her part, Betancourt shared an anecdote about one of her aunts, who copes with multiple sclerosis and seizures, using Midjourney. Being on the platform, Betancourt said, is something she is able to do at her own pace, in her own time. Creating something may take her a week or two, but she’s doing it on her own terms. Given her aunt’s experiences, Betancourt said she feels Midjourney provides people with disabilities “a sense of independence and self esteem” that they’ve created works of art using AI as a conduit through which to augment their imagination. As Betancourt told me, the images are created with a person’s own “ideas [and] vision,” but that AI is truly an assistive technology in this context.

“I think these [AI-powered] tools are very helpful,” Betancourt said.

Betancourt’s sentiments were shared with me weeks ago, but publishing this story today dovetails extremely well with this week’s news from Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino. To name one pertinent example, the company’s new Image Playgrounds app for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS that uses on-device machine learning technology to generate images based on textual and visual prompts. The software is part of the Silicon Valley’s tech titan’s forthcoming Apple Intelligence feature set, with content created in Image Playgrounds being available system-wide in places such as Messages, Pages, Freeform, and elsewhere. It’s my understanding Apple Intelligence integrates with accessibility features like VoiceOver, which makes Image Playgrounds as usable as Betancourt said Midjourney is to people with disabilities.

Betancourt acknowledged the never-ending avalanche of bad and, frankly, exceedingly cynical media coverage of artificial intelligence, pointedly noting how people are worried society’s future robotic overlords will make humans obsolete by taking away jobs from countless industries. For her own view, Betancourt chooses to take a m decidedly more optimistic mindset, saying many of the AI platforms in existence today are mere tools for “enhancing creativity” by “[augmenting] you to be better at what you’ve already felt passionate towards and love.” She added the assists from AI levels the proverbial playing field for everyone, such that the Average Jane or Joe are able to compete alongside the “huge, grandfathered-in companies that have dominated for centuries.”

Now, independent artists—yes, including those who identify as disabled—have the ability to express themselves by using AI to produce things that, according to Betancourt, look “just as professional and with high-quality” as the stuff emanating from multi-million dollar studios. People who love that old-school Kodak film look, she added, can create something with that visual style without having an actual Kodak camera.

When asked about the future of tools like Midjourney or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Betancourt was enthusiastic in her crystal ball predictions. She said this type of technology will “open so many doors” for people, adding it will subsequently enable people the ability to “achieve things and [send] messages they’ve always had held inside, but didn’t have the skillset or the resources to express themselves and show everyone.”

Betancourt continued: “I fully believe [AI tools] are going to be communicative tools, telling stories we’ve never heard before and see things we’ve never imagined. [The art] is coming from unique experiences rather than these huge studios. I think they’re going to open doors for people to be able to tell their stories—especially those with disabilities—to really be able to express themselves more fully.”