Midjourney is stepping away from AI art to build a full-body ultrasound scanner that it wants to put in spas

You probably know Midjourney for generating AI artwork from text prompts. Now, the company is making a move so unexpected that it describes it as "a little weird and a little crazy." Through a new division called Midjourney Medical, it is developing a full-body ultrasound scanner that it claims can map the inside of your body in under 60 seconds.

The Midjourney Scanner works by submerging users in water at about 2 inches per second, using a ring of ultrasonic sensors. The current prototype uses 40 imaging modules, each containing 358,000 ultrasonic elements, that transmit sound waves through the body and record the returning echoes.

Since sound travels differently through fat, muscle, bone, and organs, the system reconstructs those differences into detailed 3D images. Midjourney describes the experience as being surrounded by half a million tiny dolphins using echolocation.

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The company says the finished scan reaches sub-millimeter detail comparable to a clinical MRI, but without radiation or powerful magnetic fields, and at nearly 100 times the speed. The working prototype currently takes about 20 minutes, rather than the target of under 60 seconds, and no independent lab has verified the imaging-quality claims.

Rather than placing the machines in clinics, Midjourney plans to put them inside spas. The first Midjourney Spa is set to open in San Francisco's Union Square before the end of 2027, featuring saunas, cold plunges, and hot tubs. The company's long-term target is 50,000 scanners worldwide by 2031.

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That being said, Midjourney is starting with basic body composition maps that do not require diagnostic clearance, and will submit results to regulators over time to expand what it can claim. The company has also not addressed how scan data will be stored, secured, or whether it will be used to train its algorithms.

As for what is driving Midjourney to make such a dramatic pivot away from AI artwork, that is anyone's guess. But the timing is worth noting. Since last year, the company has been facing multiple high-profile lawsuits from major studios, including Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery, with plaintiffs describing it as a "bottomless pit of plagiarism" over how it trained its image-generation models.