Rumors about Midjourney hardware have circulated for years, but nobody saw this coming. The AI image startup is building a full-body ultrasound scanner and opening its own spa in San Francisco to house it.

"It starts by stepping into a shallow pool of golden light," Midjourney describes the process. The body sinks through a ring of underwater sensors that emit ultrasound waves and work "like a dolphin, using its echolocation." Half a million tiny elements, each about the size of a fine grain of sand, act as both speaker and microphone. They send out sound waves and measure how those waves change as they pass through skin, fat, muscle, and bone. A compute cluster then turns that data into a 3D image.

A single scan takes about 60 seconds. Midjourney says the technology should eventually surpass MRI without radiation or magnets. The device was built in partnership with ultrasound tech company Butterfly Network.

So far, only about a dozen people have been scanned, according to CEO David Holz. The ambitions are massive: by 2031, Midjourney wants to deploy a fleet of more than 50,000 scanners capable of one billion scans per month. A third-generation scanner is slated for 2028, which Midjourney says is when things get "serious." The silicon will be "completely custom," and image quality and scan times will be a "night-and-day" difference. Holz claims that with enough early imaging, the world could avoid "30% of all deaths and 50% of all healthcare costs."

For now, Midjourney is sticking to "body composition maps" that don't need FDA approval. The company says it plans to submit test results to the agency on a rolling basis to eventually get cleared for diagnostic imaging.

The move is a clear bid to break into the growing market for AI-powered health tools. Whether this is techno-dystopian vaporware for the rich or something real should become clear next year: the first spa is supposed to open by the end of 2027.