Top architects and artists used for AI prompts on midjourney
A study finds that Zaha Hadid and Wes Anderson are some of the top architects and artists used in prompts to generate AI images and videos on Midjourney. Conducted by the web-based video editing platform Kapwing, the research has studied how users refer to famous names and styles when creating their images and videos with AI. The findings show that the most used architect name on Midjourney was Zaha Hadid, with 63,103 mentions, with the next one being Frank Lloyd Wright at 13,361 mentions. Other architects frequently used on Midjourney to generate AI images and videos include Tadao Ando, Frank Gehry, Peter Zumthor, Kengo Kuma, Bjarke Ingels, Le Corbusier, Richard Meier, and Jean Nouvel.
For the directors, Wes Anderson was the most mentioned, with 92,378 prompts. His name was used more than the combined total for Tim Burton (57,000), Christopher Nolan (22,246), Ridley Scott (20,109), Guillermo del Toro (19,755), and Stanley Kubrick (16,758). Among illustrators, the fantasy artist known as WLOP was the most used name, with 166,415 mentions. Then, there’s Greg Rutkowski following with 134,695 mentions, who is also involved in a legal case against AI companies for using his name and style without permission. The study on the most copied architects and artists on Midjourney to generate AI images and videos also found that anime is one of the most repeated visual subjects in prompts. The most used titles were Akira with 53,333 mentions and Naruto with 40,494. Works by Studio Ghibli, such as Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away, also appeared frequently.
Zaha Hadid as the most used architect in AI prompt | all images courtesy of Kapwing
Midjourney Discord server counts keyword frequency
The study team started by building a list of 897 keywords, and each keyword was a name or topic used to inspire AI-generated images. These keywords came from eight groups: artists, illustrators, film directors, architects, cities, media franchises, fast-food chains, and anime. The researchers used a public online database called Midlibrary to collect examples of popular names from each category.
Then, they used the Midjourney Discord server to count how many times these keywords appeared in AI image and video prompts (for example, one prompt could be ‘in the style of Wes Anderson,’ or ‘a building by Zaha Hadid’). The total data included 4,929,594 prompts, showing how often people use references from real architects, directors, and artists when working with AI.
Wes Anderson is the most used artist for AI prompts on Midjourney
Art Nouveau poster designer, Alphonse Mucha is the most-used artist appearing in 230,794 Midjourney prompts
digital artist, WLOP is the most prompted Illustrator, appearing in 166,415 Midjourney images and videos
Akira with 53,333 mentions is the most-used anime on Midjourney prompts
Star Wars with 160,495 mentions is the most-used franchise as AI prompts