Midjourney Metaverse? CEO Reportedly Hints at Building "Real-Time Open World Holodeck"

I've reached out to official channels to confirm this (or not), but according to some attendees (as here and here), Midjourney CEO David Holz made a pretty amazing announcement in the startup's open office hours earlier this week.

Specifically, he apparently suggested Midjourney is preparing to deploy a metaverse platform of some kind.

As attendee Nick St. Pierre on Twitter/X quotes Holz:

[H]e thinks they “can get to the holodeck” by 2024.

“We’re gonna build a lot of stuff this year. I think we’ll build more stuff than I’ve ever built before…By the end of 2024 hopefully we have real-time open worlds.”

Normally I would be instantly skeptical about this as mere hearsay. For one thing, creating a dynamic virtual world isn't simply a matter generating 3D graphics, for reasons explained here.

But here's the thing: Second Life founder Philip Rosedale is a lead advisor at Midjourney.

He's listed as such on the startup's hompage. But this may be a coincidence, of course, and Holz's comments this week might have been mischaracterized; hopefully I get some kind of official reply on this.

Midjourney CEO in office hours just said he thinks they “can get to the holodeck” by 2024 😳

“We’re gonna build a lot of stuff this year. I think we’ll build more stuff than I’ve ever built before…By the end of 2024 hopefully we have real-time open worlds”

Holy shit

— Nick St. Pierre (@nickfloats) January 3, 2024