Lessons from David Holz

David Holz is the founder of Midjourney and earlier co-founded Leap Motion. This collection gathers his own words from interviews. — David Holz, founder of AI art generator Midjourney, on the future of imaging (The Register).

Infographic for "Lessons from David Holz".

On the Mission and Philosophy of Midjourney

On expanding the imaginative powers of the species: David Holz: "We like to say we’re trying to expand the imaginative powers of the human species." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).
On imagination, not art: David Holz: "It's important to emphasize that this is not about art." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).
On beautiful rather than ugly: David Holz: "We want the world to be more imaginative and we would rather make beautiful things than ugly things." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).
On the boat and the race: David Holz: "I think it's like we're making a boat, and somebody can race with the boat, but it doesn't mean that the boat's about racing." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).
On imaginative humans, not machines: David Holz: "The goal is to make humans more imaginative, not make imaginative machines, which I think is an important distinction." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).
On having fun and imagination: David Holz: "I think that's the biggest thing because it's not actually about art, it's about imagination." — David Holz, founder of AI art generator Midjourney, on the future of imaging (The Register; his quoted words).
On water, boats and dams: David Holz: "Water is dangerous, yes, but you can also swim in it, you can make boats, you can dam it and make electricity." — Midjourney Founder Talked about Its Art Style, Copyright & What AI Is (80 Level; Holz's quoted words).
On society over business: David Holz: "I’m definitely more concerned about society than business." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).

On AI's Impact on Art and Artists

On artists using the tools: David Holz: "An artist using these tools is always better than a regular person using these tools." — David Holz, founder of AI art generator Midjourney, on the future of imaging (The Register; his quoted words).
On converging on an idea: David Holz: "Midjourney can help people converge on the idea they want much more quickly, because iterating on those concepts is very laborious." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).
On confidence in weak areas: David Holz: "Another advantage for artists is it gives people confidence in areas they’re not confident in." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).
On cutting costs or expanding ambitions: David Holz: "I think some people will try to cut costs, and some people will try to expand ambitions." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).
On where the market will go: David Holz: "I think the market will go towards higher quality, more creativity, and vastly more sophisticated, diverse and deep content." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).
On Midjourney as an art student: David Holz: "I feel like Midjourney is an art student, and it has its own style, and when you invoke my name to create an image, it’s like asking an art student to make something inspired by my art." — Midjourney Founder Talked about Its Art Style, Copyright & What AI Is (80 Level; Holz's quoted words).
On repetitive jobs: David Holz: "I think the simplest rule of thumb is if a job involves doing the exact same thing over and over again, that's what the computers will be best at doing." — Regeneron ISEF 2026 - The Future of AI: A Conversation with David Holz and Maya Ajmera (YouTube auto-captions; Holz's answers only).
On ambition and confidence: David Holz: "I think ideally we use these tools to sort of make ourselves more ambitious and more confident rather than to try to do work that we would sort of like the smaller work we would do." — Regeneron ISEF 2026 - The Future of AI: A Conversation with David Holz and Maya Ajmera (YouTube auto-captions; Holz's answers only).
On not knowing where images come from: David Holz: "There isn’t really a way to get a hundred million images and know where they’re coming from." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).

On Entrepreneurship and Product Strategy

On raising money versus having a product: David Holz: "Raising money is very different than having a product that people are willing to pay for which I think is kind of a beautiful thing." — Regeneron ISEF 2026 - The Future of AI: A Conversation with David Holz and Maya Ajmera (YouTube auto-captions; Holz's answers only).
On going without money: David Holz: "I spent all my money until I was like negative $1,000 and then it's very motivating to make money when you're when you have no money left." — Regeneron ISEF 2026 - The Future of AI: A Conversation with David Holz and Maya Ajmera (YouTube auto-captions; Holz's answers only).
On being called the founder: David Holz: "I usually just prefer being called the founder, though, because CEO sounds very businessy, and we're not very businessy." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).
On running out of computers: David Holz: "I think the world will run out of computers before the technology actually gets to everybody who wants to use it." — David Holz, founder of AI art generator Midjourney, on the future of imaging (The Register; his quoted words).
On not enough computers: David Holz: "If there were 10 million people trying to use technology like this, there actually aren't enough computers." — David Holz, founder of AI art generator Midjourney, on the future of imaging (The Register; his quoted words).
On one beautiful social space: David Holz: "We want one beautiful social space for people to make stuff together and not be offended, basically, and to feel safe." — David Holz, founder of AI art generator Midjourney, on the future of imaging (The Register; his quoted words).
On inspiration over answers: David Holz: "Life isn't necessarily about giving you answers as much as it is about giving you inspiration." — Regeneron ISEF 2026 - The Future of AI: A Conversation with David Holz and Maya Ajmera (YouTube auto-captions; Holz's answers only).
On working together with computers: David Holz: "I'd been working on handtracking for maybe 10 or 12 years." — Regeneron ISEF 2026 - The Future of AI: A Conversation with David Holz and Maya Ajmera (YouTube auto-captions; Holz's answers only).
On trusting yourself: David Holz: "The first most important thing is just to trust yourself." — Regeneron ISEF 2026 - The Future of AI: A Conversation with David Holz and Maya Ajmera (YouTube auto-captions; Holz's answers only).
On making something you love: David Holz: "If you can kind of make something for yourself where you yourself love the thing, then somebody else will love the thing too." — Regeneron ISEF 2026 - The Future of AI: A Conversation with David Holz and Maya Ajmera (YouTube auto-captions; Holz's answers only).

On the Future of AI and Technology

On technology not being the problem: David Holz: "The technology itself isn’t the problem." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).
On water: David Holz: "Water can be dangerous, you can drown in it." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).
On balancing freedoms: David Holz: "You have to balance the freedom to do something with the freedom to be protected." — Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy (Forbes; his answers).
On believing in ourselves: David Holz: "I think the most dangerous thing is if we sort of like build these sort of like um how should I say like these these powerful and beautiful things and in the process we be we believe less in the beauty and power of ourselves and I think there's really an opportunity in building these tools to also make ourselves better too and so ideally we are sort of like building these angelic like things but also becoming angelic ourselves and not sort of losing the belief to become those things too." — Regeneron ISEF 2026 - The Future of AI: A Conversation with David Holz and Maya Ajmera (YouTube auto-captions; Holz's answers only).
On the asset generation pipeline: David Holz: "Before you see video games being generated on the fly, you're gonna see the technologies being used for every step of the asset generation pipeline, to increase the creativity of the content, the quality of the content, and the amount of the content." — One day consoles will have a 'giant AI chip and all the games will be dreams' (PC Gamer, 2022; Holz's quoted words).
On not trying to build God: David Holz: "We're not trying to build God, we're trying to amplify the imaginative powers of the human species." — One day consoles will have a 'giant AI chip and all the games will be dreams' (PC Gamer, 2022; Holz's quoted words).
On how compute-heavy this is: David Holz: "Probably by a factor of 10, I’d say it’s more compute than anything your average consumer has touched." — 'An engine for the imagination': an interview with Midjourney founder David Holz (The Verge, 2022; his answers).
On water as a driver of civilization: David Holz: "Water is dangerous, but it’s also a driver of civilization, and we are better off as humans who know how to live with and work with water." — Midjourney Founder Talked about Its Art Style, Copyright & What AI Is (80 Level; Holz's quoted words).
On drowning versus surfing: David Holz: "How do we go from people who are scared of drowning to kids in the future who are surfing the wave?" — 'An engine for the imagination': an interview with Midjourney founder David Holz (The Verge, 2022; his answers).
On innovation before conservation: David Holz: "I would always say like innovation it before conservation." — Regeneron ISEF 2026 - The Future of AI: A Conversation with David Holz and Maya Ajmera (YouTube auto-captions; Holz's answers only).
On a PhD in fluid mechanics: David Holz: "I was working on a PhD in fluid mechanics while working at NASA and Max Planck." — 'An engine for the imagination': an interview with Midjourney founder David Holz (The Verge, 2022; his answers).
On what we want to become: David Holz: "The most interesting question is not so much like what do we want to build, but what but the big the more interesting question is what do we want to become?" — Regeneron ISEF 2026 - The Future of AI: A Conversation with David Holz and Maya Ajmera (YouTube auto-captions; Holz's answers only).
On where the training data comes from: David Holz: "Our training data is pretty much from the same place as everybody else’s — which is pretty much the internet." — 'An engine for the imagination': an interview with Midjourney founder David Holz (The Verge, 2022; his answers).
On the aesthetic singularity: David Holz: "I would like us to try to reach something I call the aesthetic singularity." — Regeneron ISEF 2026 - The Future of AI: A Conversation with David Holz and Maya Ajmera (YouTube auto-captions; Holz's answers only).

Learn more:

On the Mission and Philosophy of Midjourney

On AI's Impact on Art and Artists

On Entrepreneurship and Product Strategy

On the Future of AI and Technology

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