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Naïvely I thought Waifu generator was just “some guy having a laugh” fine-tuning a model off of hugging face, but reading through the comments here, it is obvio

Naïvely I thought Waifu generator was just “some guy having a laugh” fine-tuning a model off of hugging face, but reading through the comments here, it is obviously a much, much bigger enterprise. Can you talk a little about team size, work process, funding and revenue stream? I think the effort required for such an undertaking is vastly underestimated by readers.

hansel_der 5y ago
> Naïvely I thought Waifu generator was just “some guy having a laugh” same here. what's naive about it? not to badmouth the undertaking, but wtf is this doing on HN?
- wodenokoto 5y ago
  Apparently it takes 6 people making a business to run a waifu generator. That pretty far from one person doing it as a joke.
  - hansel_der 5y ago
    well, apparently... i sincerely applaud the creativity of establishing such a business
Cixelyn 5y ago
Right now it's a small team of 6 people, and we have a bit of funding + compute credits to train models. There's a bit of revenue from some past projects and AI-consulting, but we're mostly betting big on our new AI-powerd mobile title Arrowmancer[1]. > I think the effort required for such an undertaking is vastly underestimated by readers. Haha for sure. Hosting a real-time ML model for people to do sub 1-second inferences at HN-load scale is definitely nontrivial. [1] https://arrowmancer.com https://arrowmancer.com
- KronisLV 5y ago
  That seems like a nice project that you're working on, definitely more high effort than some other attempts at generated art (procedurally or otherwise). I can't help but to feel that this would be a better fit for the fad of NFTs as well, as opposed to ugly monkeys or other asset flips that were pretty obvious cash grabs. Either way, good luck!
  - LoveMortuus 5y ago
    I'm guessing your referring to the "one of a kind" part of NFTs, which made me wonder, how would they validate that the created Waifu hasn't been created before? The question is, would people buy, since there are near endless, and a huge difference is that these don't have a story attached to them...
    - Gigachad 5y ago
      Probably for it to work you would have to limit them and have a set of hand selected images. Seemingly people will buy anything if you can hype it enough.
      - LoveMortuus 5y ago
        I guess you could limit it with a colour palette and that way give yourself an option to bring special colour palette images in the future, for special events or occasions.
        KronisLV 5y ago
        This sounds a lot like what games like Counter Strike: Global Offensive do with their cosmetic item skins, where they have rarity for each and also specific packages with themes and whatnot. Now that's a fun business idea (ethically questionable gambling related aspects aside, guess it's about how one markets that and how honest they are).
    - KronisLV 5y ago
      > I'm guessing your referring to the "one of a kind" part of NFTs, which made me wonder, how would they validate that the created Waifu hasn't been created before? Oh, not even that, since while some data ends up on the blockchain, i find the whole ownership concept a bit nebulous at best, much like how people mock the whole "oh, just right click the image to save it" thing. What i was actually referring to was more along the lines of the collector economy idea itself - people willing to exchange their monetary resources for something that they enjoy. Having it be out of a sense of endearment and aesthetic enjoyment (waifus and husbandos) rather than the desire to flip those things (possibly a number of other NFTs or collectibles) seems to be less morally questionable to me! While i'm not really familiar with the whole NFT space, to me it seems that projects like CryptoKitties are more agreeable and thus viable in this space, as would AI generated images of cute characters! Actually, that seems like a really good fit to me, regardless of how the actual "uniqueness" or "ownership" aspect would play out.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  Waifulabs is certainly a good marketing instrument for Arrowmancer. And regardless of whether the game gains traction it will be a great showcase in case you ever want to offer this as an API for other mobile game creators.

hansel_der 5y ago

> Naïvely I thought Waifu generator was just “some guy having a laugh” same here. what's naive about it? not to badmouth the undertaking, but wtf is this doing on HN?

wodenokoto 5y ago
Apparently it takes 6 people making a business to run a waifu generator. That pretty far from one person doing it as a joke.
- hansel_der 5y ago
  well, apparently... i sincerely applaud the creativity of establishing such a business

Cixelyn 5y ago

Right now it's a small team of 6 people, and we have a bit of funding + compute credits to train models. There's a bit of revenue from some past projects and AI-consulting, but we're mostly betting big on our new AI-powerd mobile title Arrowmancer[1]. > I think the effort required for such an undertaking is vastly underestimated by readers. Haha for sure. Hosting a real-time ML model for people to do sub 1-second inferences at HN-load scale is definitely nontrivial. [1] https://arrowmancer.com https://arrowmancer.com

KronisLV 5y ago
That seems like a nice project that you're working on, definitely more high effort than some other attempts at generated art (procedurally or otherwise). I can't help but to feel that this would be a better fit for the fad of NFTs as well, as opposed to ugly monkeys or other asset flips that were pretty obvious cash grabs. Either way, good luck!
- LoveMortuus 5y ago
  I'm guessing your referring to the "one of a kind" part of NFTs, which made me wonder, how would they validate that the created Waifu hasn't been created before? The question is, would people buy, since there are near endless, and a huge difference is that these don't have a story attached to them...
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    Probably for it to work you would have to limit them and have a set of hand selected images. Seemingly people will buy anything if you can hype it enough.
    - LoveMortuus 5y ago
      I guess you could limit it with a colour palette and that way give yourself an option to bring special colour palette images in the future, for special events or occasions.
      - KronisLV 5y ago
        This sounds a lot like what games like Counter Strike: Global Offensive do with their cosmetic item skins, where they have rarity for each and also specific packages with themes and whatnot. Now that's a fun business idea (ethically questionable gambling related aspects aside, guess it's about how one markets that and how honest they are).
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    > I'm guessing your referring to the "one of a kind" part of NFTs, which made me wonder, how would they validate that the created Waifu hasn't been created before? Oh, not even that, since while some data ends up on the blockchain, i find the whole ownership concept a bit nebulous at best, much like how people mock the whole "oh, just right click the image to save it" thing. What i was actually referring to was more along the lines of the collector economy idea itself - people willing to exchange their monetary resources for something that they enjoy. Having it be out of a sense of endearment and aesthetic enjoyment (waifus and husbandos) rather than the desire to flip those things (possibly a number of other NFTs or collectibles) seems to be less morally questionable to me! While i'm not really familiar with the whole NFT space, to me it seems that projects like CryptoKitties are more agreeable and thus viable in this space, as would AI generated images of cute characters! Actually, that seems like a really good fit to me, regardless of how the actual "uniqueness" or "ownership" aspect would play out.
wongarsu 5y ago
Waifulabs is certainly a good marketing instrument for Arrowmancer. And regardless of whether the game gains traction it will be a great showcase in case you ever want to offer this as an API for other mobile game creators.