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Midjourney Pivots From AI Image Generation To Body Scanning Medical Spa

(Thursday June 18, 2026 @05:00PM (BeauHD) from the straight-out-of-left-field dept.)


Midjourney is [1]expanding beyond AI image generation with [2]plans for a medical-imaging business built around a water-based, full-body ultrasound scanner that uses hundreds of thousands of sensors and AI to reconstruct MRI-like images. "As you descend into the water, hundreds of thousands of tiny elements take turns, sending out waves, listening together, compressing and then streaming data to a massive cluster where thousands of computers split the task," Midjourney explained in the announcement. "By looking at how the shapes of all the waves change, we reconstruct a detailed map or 'image' which basically lets us figure out what's in there." The company hopes to open a San Francisco scanning "spa" in late 2027, with 50,000 or more deployed around the world by 2031. The Register reports:

> It's not clear how fast the process is with the prototype unit, but Midjourney said its goal is for the whole thing to take around a minute. "We think it's completely possible that with enough early imaging in the future, the world could avoid 30% of all deaths and 50% of all healthcare costs," the company added.

>

> According to a "technical" video included in the announcement, there's a ring of 40 scanners included in the prototype unit the company has built. That ring of 40 elements contains 358,000 ultrasonic elements made up of tiny transducers that create ultrasound waves in water while listening for how they change when they slap the body of whoever is in Midjourney's dunk tank up to a thousand times a second.

>

> [...] Midjourney said that it's planning to open its first ultrasound scanner spa at the end of 2027, but it has another hurdle to jump: FDA approval. Beyond improving its tech so that the second-generation scanner is ready for its 2027 spa date, "regulation is the next limit," the company said. "Normally, for every diagnostic medical capability you need FDA approval," Midjourney explained. "We're starting by just giving you detailed body composition maps -- and we'll be submitting regular test results to the FDA for increased capabilities."

>

> Midjourney also fails to mention how it will store and secure those scans, whether it will use said scans to train its body composition-detection algorithms, and how it's ensuring those algorithms get things right that it usually take a human a few years of education and training to learn.



[1] https://www.midjourney.com/medical/blogpost

[2] https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/06/18/midjourney-pivots-from-ai-image-generation-to-body-scanning-medical-spa-where-patients-bathe-in-golden-light/5258429



If you are just going to make up numbers (Score:2)

by zawarski ( 1381571 )

I up it to saving 95% of deaths and 99.9% in health care costs.

Burning other peoples money until? (Score:3)

by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 )

The money runs out or they get lucky and trip over an actual business model.

Re: (Score:2)

by burtosis ( 1124179 )

> The money runs out or they get lucky and trip over an actual business model.

I know the images they scraped from the internet weren’t very high resolution, so the results of their revere image diffusion might not be too good but this is overkill.

"...could avoid 30% of all deaths... (Score:2)

by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 )

...and 50% of all healthcare costs"

Citation needed

My spidey sense is tingling (Score:2)

by stabiesoft ( 733417 )

MRI and Ultrasound are used for different stuff. Just like sometimes you can't do an MRI if you need a CT scan. Heck sometimes a plain old X-ray is more useful than an MRI. Ultra sounds are useful don't get me wrong, its the implication when they say "MRI-like images" that I find deceitful. I'm also a bit skeptical of even the ultrasound comparison. The ultrasound I had for blood vessel blockage they jammed that probe pretty hard into me, probably to get the probe closer to the actual vessels and move stuff

hallucinating your insides (Score:2)

by awwshit ( 6214476 )

Woah, there's some things, baby, I just can't swallow

Mama told me that girls are hollow

Uh-uh, what's inside a girl?

Huh, something's telling me there's a whole 'nother world

For 20 dollars, I'll give you a good fortune next time ...