AI image generator Midjourney has a brand new scam - underwater ultrasound "wellness" scans in 60 seconds at spas

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Their first scam, of course, was stealing millions if not billions of copyrighted images - Midjourney was infamous for a while because so many pieces of watermarks intended to discourage theft popped up in whatever their AI spat out - and convincing gullible, desperate wannabes that somehow giving a text prompt to a bot and sorting through hundreds or maybe thousands of different images before finally claiming one as "their own work" could turn those sad pretenders into real artists like the artists whose work Midjourney had stolen.

The company got a lot of attention for that first scam, but there are a lot more AI image generators competing with them now, letting the desperate wannabes get their AI-generated fake art more cheaply.

So now... (drum roll)

Midjourney pivots from AI image generation to body scanning medical spa where patients bathe in 'golden light'
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

On Wednesday, Midjourney announced the establishment of Midjourney Medical, which it admitted was a bit out of left field. To promote the tech, it claims to be opening a spa in San Francisco where guests will be able to step “into a shallow pool of golden light,” before being lowered into a tank where ultrasound sensors bombard their bodies in order to take a scan that AI pieces together into MRI-like images. This sounds like the plot of a cheap sci-fi movie, but there is some real science behind it.

“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.”

That “basically” isn’t exactly reassuring when Midjourney says it wants to have 50,000 or more of the things deployed around the world by 2031 “with a total scanning capacity of a billion scans a month” for use as a preventative health tool. 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.

Wow. Golden light, just a minute or so in the tank, and if done enough, the world could avoid 30% of all deaths and 50% of all healthcare costs.

Quite an offer, especially since the world hasn't been able to figure out how to avoid any deaths, throughout the planet's history.

More at that link for The Register's article, including about their magic tech, a ring of 40 scanners containing "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."

The Verge found a number of problems with Midjourney's beautiful golden scam vision.

Something’s off with Midjourney’s pivot to body scanners
https://www.theverge.com/report/954826/midjourney-medical-ai-ultrasound-body-scanner-lacks-evidence

But despite that medical-sounding language, Midjourney is not initially framing the scanner as a diagnostic medical device, citing the high FDA clearance and clinical trials required to market the scanner for medical use. (Though Midjourney says it plans to expand into medical applications later.) The company describes it instead as a way to give people more information about their bodies and plans to embed the machines in spas, where scans will become “a side-effect” of visits. Concept images show luxurious golden rooms and pools of water, about as far from a doctor’s office as imaginable.

-snip-

William Morrison, a professor of radiology at Thomas Jefferson University, was the most skeptical about Midjourney’s proposal. He called the whole thing a “vibe-based rollout” supported by images that “are markedly limited compared to existing technology such as CT and MRI.” Morrison described ultrasound as a “very old technology” and said the water bath approach had been largely abandoned because of the physical limits of sound waves making such an approach difficult to implement.

-snip-

Murthy agreed that “body composition is plausible” as a use case, but noted “much of the messaging [from Midjourney] isn’t about body composition but about cancer screening and overall lifespan prolongation.” Body composition can already be measured with available technology, he said, adding that some weighing scales “will give you similar measurements with slightly less accuracy.”

-snip-

“The interest in improving health through imaging is wonderful,” Davenport said. “The race to market with unproven claims that almost certainly will not prove true is ethically problematic.” Morrison’s appraisal was harsher: The whole move, he said, has the feel of an ad campaign. “It makes me think that this may be more of a grift than a pivot.”

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