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At some point they have to actually make money, and I don't see how continuously releasing the fruits of their expensive training for people to run locally on t

At some point they have to actually make money, and I don't see how continuously releasing the fruits of their expensive training for people to run locally on their own computer (or a competing cloud service) for free is going to get them there. They're not running a charity, the walls will have to go up eventually. Likewise with Mistral, you don't get half a billion in funding and a two billion valuation on the assumption that you'll keep giving the product away for free forever.

keiferski 3y ago
But there are plenty of other business models available for open source projects. I use Midjourney a lot and (based on the images in the article) it’s leaps and bounds beyond SD. Not sure why I would switch if they are both locked down.
- Auracle 3y ago
  SD would probably be a lot better if they didn't have to make sure it worked on consumer GPUs. Maybe this announcement is a step towards that where the best model will only be able to be accessed by most using a paid service.
  - raxxorraxor 3y ago
    I believe the opposite. I think the ability for people to adopt models made SD more successful than any other model for image synthesis in the first place. Similarly how consumer PCs drove innovation towards faster hardware. I believe it to be the reference of image synthesis for that matter, so "better" is a bit blurry.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Is it possible to fine-tune Midjourney or produce a LORA?
  - keiferski 3y ago
    Sorry I don’t know what that means, but a quick google shows some results about it.
    - elbear 3y ago
      Finetune means to do extra training on the model with your own dataset, for example to teach it to produce images in a certain style.
  - nickthegreek 3y ago
    No. You can provide a photos to merge though.
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  Stable Diffusion has a much deeper learning curve but can generate far more accurate images fitting your perhaps special use case. Although I don't understand the criticism of the images in question. Without a prompt comparison, it is impossible to compare image synthesis. What are examples of images that are beyond these?
  - keiferski 3y ago
    I haven’t used SD so maybe the images on their home page here aren’t representative. But they look very generic and boring to me. They seem to lack “style” in a general aesthetic sense. I am using Midjourney to basically create images in particular artistic styles (e.g., “painting of coffee cup in ukiyo-e style”) and that works very well. I am interested in SD for creating images based on artwork that isn’t indexed by Midjourney, though, as some of the more obscure artists aren’t available.
    - raxxorraxor 3y ago
      Usually there are models adapted to a specific theme since generic models at some point hit barriers. To get an idea, you could look up examples on sites like civitai.com. Of course such sites are heavily biased towards content that is popular, but you will also find quite specific models if you search for certain styles.
archerx 3y ago
Ironically their over sensitive nsfw image detector in their api caused me to stop using it and run it locally instead. I was using it to render animations of hundreds of frames but when every 20th to 30th image comes out blurry it ruins the whole animation and it would double the cost or more to rerender it with a different seed hoping to not trigger the over zealous blurring. I don’t mind that they don’t want to let you generate nsfw images but their detector is hopelessly broken, it once censored a cube, yes a cube...
- Sharlin 3y ago
  Unfortunately their financial and reputational incentives are firmly aligned with preventing false negatives at the cost of a lot of false positives.
  - archerx 3y ago
    Unfortunately I don't want to pay for hundreds if not thousands of images I have to throw away because it decided some random innocent element is offensive and blurs the entire image. Here is the red cube it censored because my innocent eyes wouldn't be able to handle it; https://archerx.com/censoredcube.png https://archerx.com/censoredcube.png What they are achieving with the over zealous safety issues are driving developers to on demand GPU hosts that will let them host their own models, which also opens up a lot more freedom. I wanted to use the stability AI api as my main source for Stable Diffusion but they make it really really hard especially if you want use it as part of your business.
    - Sharlin 3y ago
      I agree that given the status quo, it's a no-brainer to host your own model rather than use their SaaS – and likely one of the main reasons SAI doesn't seem to be on a very stable (heh) footing financially. To put it mildly.
- TehCorwiz 3y ago
  Everyone always talks about Platonic Solids but never Romantic Solids. /s

keiferski 3y ago

But there are plenty of other business models available for open source projects. I use Midjourney a lot and (based on the images in the article) it’s leaps and bounds beyond SD. Not sure why I would switch if they are both locked down.

Auracle 3y ago
SD would probably be a lot better if they didn't have to make sure it worked on consumer GPUs. Maybe this announcement is a step towards that where the best model will only be able to be accessed by most using a paid service.
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  I believe the opposite. I think the ability for people to adopt models made SD more successful than any other model for image synthesis in the first place. Similarly how consumer PCs drove innovation towards faster hardware. I believe it to be the reference of image synthesis for that matter, so "better" is a bit blurry.
bee_rider 3y ago
Is it possible to fine-tune Midjourney or produce a LORA?
- keiferski 3y ago
  Sorry I don’t know what that means, but a quick google shows some results about it.
  - elbear 3y ago
    Finetune means to do extra training on the model with your own dataset, for example to teach it to produce images in a certain style.
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  No. You can provide a photos to merge though.
raxxorraxor 3y ago
Stable Diffusion has a much deeper learning curve but can generate far more accurate images fitting your perhaps special use case. Although I don't understand the criticism of the images in question. Without a prompt comparison, it is impossible to compare image synthesis. What are examples of images that are beyond these?
- keiferski 3y ago
  I haven’t used SD so maybe the images on their home page here aren’t representative. But they look very generic and boring to me. They seem to lack “style” in a general aesthetic sense. I am using Midjourney to basically create images in particular artistic styles (e.g., “painting of coffee cup in ukiyo-e style”) and that works very well. I am interested in SD for creating images based on artwork that isn’t indexed by Midjourney, though, as some of the more obscure artists aren’t available.
  - raxxorraxor 3y ago
    Usually there are models adapted to a specific theme since generic models at some point hit barriers. To get an idea, you could look up examples on sites like civitai.com. Of course such sites are heavily biased towards content that is popular, but you will also find quite specific models if you search for certain styles.

archerx 3y ago

Ironically their over sensitive nsfw image detector in their api caused me to stop using it and run it locally instead. I was using it to render animations of hundreds of frames but when every 20th to 30th image comes out blurry it ruins the whole animation and it would double the cost or more to rerender it with a different seed hoping to not trigger the over zealous blurring. I don’t mind that they don’t want to let you generate nsfw images but their detector is hopelessly broken, it once censored a cube, yes a cube...

Sharlin 3y ago
Unfortunately their financial and reputational incentives are firmly aligned with preventing false negatives at the cost of a lot of false positives.
- archerx 3y ago
  Unfortunately I don't want to pay for hundreds if not thousands of images I have to throw away because it decided some random innocent element is offensive and blurs the entire image. Here is the red cube it censored because my innocent eyes wouldn't be able to handle it; https://archerx.com/censoredcube.png https://archerx.com/censoredcube.png What they are achieving with the over zealous safety issues are driving developers to on demand GPU hosts that will let them host their own models, which also opens up a lot more freedom. I wanted to use the stability AI api as my main source for Stable Diffusion but they make it really really hard especially if you want use it as part of your business.
  - Sharlin 3y ago
    I agree that given the status quo, it's a no-brainer to host your own model rather than use their SaaS – and likely one of the main reasons SAI doesn't seem to be on a very stable (heh) footing financially. To put it mildly.
TehCorwiz 3y ago
Everyone always talks about Platonic Solids but never Romantic Solids. /s