Midjourney is one of the most widely used AI image generation platforms, producing high-quality artistic and photorealistic images through text prompts. Midjourney images are frequently shared without disclosure of their synthetic origin, on social media, in news articles, in profile photos, and in content intended to deceive or harm. Identifying Midjourney-generated images uses the same forensic principles as general AI detection but with knowledge of Midjourney's specific technical characteristics.

Midjourney's metadata signature

Midjourney images saved directly from the platform typically contain no camera EXIF data. When metadata is present, it may include software tags referencing Midjourney or Discord (through which Midjourney is accessed). Some Midjourney versions embed a software field reading 'Adobe Firefly' or other editing software if the image was post-processed, but camera make, model, and GPS data will always be absent from natively generated Midjourney output.

Midjourney output dimensions

Midjourney's default output dimensions are 1024x1024 pixels (square). Portrait orientation defaults to 896x1152. Landscape defaults to 1152x896. Other supported aspect ratios produce outputs like 1344x768 (16:9), 768x1344 (9:16), 1216x832, and 832x1216. All Midjourney output dimensions are multiples of 64 as required by the underlying diffusion architecture. If an image claiming to be a photograph is exactly one of these sizes with no EXIF camera data, it is almost certainly Midjourney output.

Visual characteristics of Midjourney images

Midjourney V6 and later versions produce photorealistic images with few obvious visual artifacts. Earlier versions (V1 through V4) showed characteristic smoothing in skin textures, oversaturated colors, and unusually perfect symmetry in portraits. V5 and V6 outputs are often indistinguishable from photographs by eye. Common remaining tells include: text in the image appearing as plausible-looking but unreadable glyphs; hands with slight anatomical inconsistencies; and backgrounds with subtle repetition or illogical perspective.

How to check a suspected Midjourney image

Upload the image to the ScanErase free deepfake detector. The tool checks for missing EXIF metadata, known Midjourney output dimensions, sensor noise absence, and color balance patterns. A Midjourney image will typically score high on the EXIF signal (90+ for missing camera data on JPEG) and the dimension signal (80+ for exact Midjourney sizes), resulting in an overall score indicating probable or high-confidence AI generation.

Frequently asked questions