Alexandr Wang, the newly appointed Chief AI Officer at Meta, revealed on Friday that the company will be licensing Midjourney’s “aesthetic technology” for upcoming products and models. Midjourney is well-known for its AI image generation capabilities and also produces short videos.

Wang disclosed the news through posts on X.

“Today we’re excited to announce a collaboration with @midjourney to license their aesthetic technology for our future models and products, bringing beauty to billions,” Wang stated. “This technical partnership between our research teams is part of our initiative to collaborate with the top companies in the field whose work and expertise enhance our own. We are deeply impressed by Midjourney. They have achieved remarkable feats of technical and aesthetic excellence, and we are eager to work more closely with them.”

Wang is directing Meta’s AI endeavors. The 28-year-old founder of Scale AI, which was acquired by Meta for $14.3 billion, is part of a billion-dollar recruitment effort by Zuckerberg, who has attracted talent from competitors like OpenAI.

Recently, Meta declared a hiring freeze as part of an internal reorganization of its AI initiatives, which Zuckerberg asserts will yield superintelligence for the world.

The collaboration with Midjourney represents one of Wang’s initial significant public actions as Meta’s Chief AI Officer.

Meta’s AI image and video creation tools have fallen behind those of competitors. Midjourney’s sophisticated image and video models are likely the “aesthetic technology” referenced by Wang.

The Meta AI application permits users to share images and videos; however, it has faced criticism for producing generic AI content and having intellectual property concerns. Midjourney’s feed is more polished, although it is embroiled in a lawsuit from Disney and Universal over IP infringement.

Earlier this year, Midjourney launched a new AI video tool for generating short clips from images.

By leveraging Midjourney’s tools and models, Meta intends to close the gap with competitors like Gemini and ChatGPT.

This partnership signifies that Meta’s internal AI technology still has a considerable journey to undertake in reaching the superintelligence envisioned by Zuckerberg.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, the parent company of Mashable, has initiated a lawsuit against OpenAI for purported copyright infringement related to the training and operation of its AI systems.