AI artwork generation has been the talk of the town thanks to models like DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney. While these tools can be fun to play with, one major concern for people is how they could also be used to create harmful or NSFW content. For the unknown, NSFW content typically refers to material that contains sexual or graphic content that may not be suitable for certain audiences or work environments. 

In this post, we’ll explore whether or not one of these tools – Midjourney can be used to create and share NSFW content, and what the platform’s policies are regarding this type of content.

Does Midjourney allow NSFW content?

Midjourney’s community guidelines warn that creations made on the platform be PG-13 appropriate to ensure its tool is accessible to a broader group of users. These guidelines specifically warn users:

  • To avoid nudity, sexual organs, sexual imagery, fetishes, or any other related topic.
  • To avoid visually disturbing content that is considered gore. These are images of detached body parts of humans or animals, deformed bodies, severed limbs, cannibalism, blood, violence, pestilence, etc. 
  • To avoid creating images that may be deemed offensive or abusive including content that can be viewed as racist, homophobic, disturbing, or in some way derogatory to a community. This would also include offensive images of celebrities or public figures or naked children. 

These restrictions don’t just apply to Midjourney’s own servers but also to private servers that use the Midjourney Bot. You cannot create such images using Private Mode or when communicating via a direct message with the AI bot. 

Related: Can Midjourney Images Be Used Commercially? Midjourney License Explained

How does Midjourney block NSFW content?

To prevent users from creating NSFW content, Midjourney prohibits the use of certain language and behaviors on its platform by banning words and phrases that could be used to create harmful or offensive images. The banned language can sometimes include certain words that may not be popular with everyone but can otherwise be used to generate images that in a wider sense can be considered inappropriate, offensive, or harmful. 

For instance, Midjourney prevents text inputs that contain the peach emoji which itself isn’t offensive but can be used alongside other keywords that may generate content that is NSFW. This measure has been taken because the Midjourney Bot may not understand certain languages in the same way a human would. 

When you enter a word or phrase that is banned by Midjourney, you will see a “Banned prompt” warning on Discord with a message highlighting which word or phrase is banned from being used with Midjourney. If someone circumvents this prompt or violates the community guidelines, they will get a warning from their community’s moderator. For repeated violations, Midjourney would implement a temporary time-out from accessing its chatbot or block them permanently from using its service. 

Related: Midjourney V5 Guide

Can you make NSFW content on Midjourney?

Although Midjourney has restrictions in place to prevent showing NSFW content, some prompts may unintentionally generate non-PG-13 images. This could happen when the input prompts contain words that haven’t been banned yet but can be interpreted by the AI to create images that may not be appropriate.

Since machine learning isn’t as straightforward as humans and lacks real-world knowledge, people may find many different ways to generate NSFW content using different keywords. If you think an image you created is inappropriate to be hosted on Midjourney, you can always self-police them by reporting it yourself. This can be done by using the ❌ emoji reaction on a generated image or by right-clicking on the content and going to Apps > Cancel/Report Job. 

When you report a creation to Midjourney, it will be sent to the community moderator for review. This will help Midjourney add certain words from your prompt to its banned words list and prevent others from taking advantage of its AI bot to generate NSFW content. In case Midjourney finds out that you’re repeatedly using prompts that violate its guidelines, you may be given a timeout from using the bot or be blocked from using the service altogether. 

That’s all you need to know on whether Midjourney can make NSFW content. 

Related: How to Subscribe to Midjourney Using Discord or Their Website