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Midjourney dropped its first video generator Wednesday, and the price point might just upend the entire artificial intelligence (AI) video market.
The V1 model takes any still image and transforms it into four different 5-second animated clips. Users can upload their own photos or grab images from Midjourney’s existing generators, then watch them spring to life with a simple click.
Each video job costs about eight times more than generating a static image. But since every job delivers four videos totaling 20 seconds of content, users pay roughly the equivalent of one image generation per second of video.
That pricing strategy puts Midjourney’s $10 monthly plan in direct competition with services costing 25 times more. Google’s Veo 3 runs $249.99 monthly. OpenAI’s Sora starts at $20.
“This is amazing, surprising, and over 25 times cheaper than what the market has shipped before,” CEO David Holz announced in a blog post.
Source: Midjourney
The launch timing creates an interesting backdrop. Disney and Universal sued Midjourney just five days earlier, alleging the company trained its models on copyrighted characters without permission. The studios specifically flagged concerns about Midjourney’s upcoming video capabilities in their complaint.
“Piracy is piracy. And the fact that it’s done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing,” Disney general counsel Horacio Gutierrez stated last week.
Midjourney pressed ahead anyway. The tool offers two motion settings: low motion for subtle movements, such as gentle breezes or blinking, and high motion for dynamic camera work and subject animation. Users can extend individual clips up to 21 seconds by adding four-second increments.
Initial reactions suggest that the company has hit its target audience. Perplexity AI designer Phi Hoang called the results “surpassing all my expectations” on social media.
The video generator operates exclusively through Midjourney’s website and Discord server. Like the company’s image models, it requires a subscription starting at $10 monthly for basic access.
Holz frames the video launch as part of bigger ambitions. He described V1 as “a stepping stone” toward creating “models capable of real-time open-world simulations” where users could explore AI-generated environments interactively.
The company serves nearly 20 million users and earned $300 million in 2024, according to the recent lawsuit filed by Disney. Adding affordable video generation to that user base could significantly expand AI-generated content creation across social media and creative industries.
Midjourney plans to adjust pricing and features based on usage patterns over the coming month as demand patterns emerge.
