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Key Stable Diffusion Researchers Leave Stability AI as Company Flounders

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Re: Key Stable Diffusion Researchers Leave Stability AI as Company Flounders

#131

Post by whywhywhywhy »

five_lights wrote: post #92
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> damage many feel they've done to the art community If the "art community" can't understand what an insane gift SD1.5 and SDXL was to them then I don't know what to tell them. Without those open models we could have easily ended up in a world where this tech existed but was only in the hands of people who could pay OpenAI or Adobe a month to use it, and I mean with the power of it what should that cost be? I mean to…

>I'm an artist and designer too, the fear of how fast these tools can replicate styles and take jobs becomes a lot less scary when I can take advantage of it myself or enhance my workflow with it myself without paying a subscription tax to do so. Have you tried to train SD on your artwork? Pretty curious about the results an artist can achieve when embracing this tech.

Yeah I've fine-tuned it on our company product aesthetics and now our product team uses it for rendering and concept work, something that wouldn't be possible using this tech via Midjourney, etc.

Re: Key Stable Diffusion Researchers Leave Stability AI as Company Flounders

#132

Post by ben_w »

__loam wrote: post #111
ben_w wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty indisputably piracy, whether or not it's legal/fair use/whatever. Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'indisputably' that I wasn't previously aware of. > I believe many artists rightly refuse to accept this threat to their livelihoods because it was built on their labor . This model is trained from scratch using only public domain/CC0 and copyright images with specific permission for us…

https://huggingface.co/datasets/P1ayer-1/books-3/discussions... It seems incredible to me to suggest that piracy wasn't involved in the collection of training data, regardless of your view on the morality or legality of it. Datasets like books 3 indisputably contained copyrighted content that was being distributed without permission from the rightsholder. That's just the definition of piracy. If we can't agree on tha…

> https://huggingface.co/datasets/P1ayer-1/books-3/discussions...

https://transparencyreport.google.com/copyright/overview?hl=...

> It seems incredible to me to suggest that piracy wasn't involved in the collection of training data, regardless of your view on the morality or legality of it. Datasets like books 3 indisputably contained copyrighted content that was being distributed without permission from the rightsholder.

Is the Google search engine piracy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_v._Google,_Inc.

https://9to5google.com/2016/04/27/getty-images-google-piracy...

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN07281154/

> That's just the definition of piracy. If we can't agree on that then I'm not sure what we're doing here.

It literally isn't the definition of piracy.

Piracy exists only with regard to the legal definition: "Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works."

Even this definition annoys a lot of people, but I will ignore the whole "it's not theft because you're not depriving the original owner of anything" as a case of taking an analogy too literally.

> More materially to this discussion, yes, it would absolutely make a difference if the AI was only trained on licensed content. I wouldn't use it but I wouldn't have a problem with it. The issue is specifically that much of the work being used without permission is being used to replace the people who made that work, and is being used without permission. If the model is based on ethically acquired data, it would be less able to reproduce the style of specific artists. Imo, there would be more room for both kinds of art in this case.

Congratulations on being consistent, almost all the artists and authors are still permanently out of work.

Even ignoring that style isn't covered by copyright (because you could reasonably argue instead that it's a trademark and/or design right issue), most artists are already extremely poor due to oversupply by other humans.

> I'm also aware that it's not a clear cut case legally but I think AI advocates and tech enthusiasts think it's a lot more likely that AI will win in court than the actual chances. Napster took years to litigate and was eventually shutdown. There's a really good discussion about this on the decoder podcast between actual lawyers.

FWIW, I know better than to trust my own beliefs[0] about law, as (free) ChatGPT is simultaneously bad, and yet vastly better at it than me.

Likewise, I think (but hold the view weakly) the mere existence of AI at even the level it was before ChatGPT's first release, is going to force a radical change in the nature of IP laws — even then these models were too good-and-cheap for countries to not allow them, while also breaking a lot of the current assumptions about everything: https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2022/10/09-19.33.04.html

[0] I really ought to get a T-shirt printed with "Wittgenstein was wrong!"; there are so many different ways I don't accept one of his famous quotes: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/72280/first-p...

Re: Key Stable Diffusion Researchers Leave Stability AI as Company Flounders

#133

Post by pelagicAustral »

int_19h wrote: post #115
pelagicAustral wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are selling something, and no one is buying it, the value you have generated is zero. If you put something online and you did not bother to understand this material can potentially be used by a third-party on account of its loose licensing, then who's to blame?

But the licensing isn't loose in many (most?) cases we're aware of. Merely making an image publicly available online doesn't give the viewers rights to do whatever they want with it under our copyright laws.

Well, I suppose the keyword here is "most?" because the burden of proof lies with the prosecution, the legal gymnastics of coming up a reasonable argument to this will be interesting.

Re: Key Stable Diffusion Researchers Leave Stability AI as Company Flounders

#134

Post by credit_guy »

swyx wrote: post #57
minimaxir wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stability AI had massive support when Stable Diffusion 1.x and SDXL each hit the scene. But the Gen AI industry has evolved so rapidly that forks and iterations on the models outpaced them, especially commercially. That's a feature of open-source development, not a bug. But it's a reason (along with the general financial issues which are the company's fault alone) why Stability is switching to a "need a membership to…

its a (minor, not permanent) blow to open source ai that stability, and now mistral, felt the need to switch to closed for their leading models. openwashing is a crowdpleaser but everyone goes closed when things get serious. basically only meta is the leading hope. i hope more players emerge - but i also dont have a ton of ideas on how to fund them. these efforts take serious resources. that said i think its impt to…

> these efforts take serious resources

Meta just published their new optimization results [1]. According to them

  > training a 7B model on 512 GPUs to 2T tokens using this method would take just under two weeks.
In this context a GPU is an NVIDIA A100, which you can buy, if you can buy, for $10000.

And this is after an explosion of ideas that lead to unthinkable optimizations just two years ago.

If someone did train such a model 2 years ago, it would have cost hundreds of millions. Now it's 5 million. Maybe in 2 years it's going to be only $50k. Should you start a startup now and invest $5 million, an risk someone stealing the show for pennies in 2 years? If you do, I really can't see if you can afford to open source the results of your training.

[1] training a 7B model on 512 GPUs to 2T tokens using this method would take just under two weeks.

Re: Key Stable Diffusion Researchers Leave Stability AI as Company Flounders

#135

Post by SkyBelow »

cdata wrote: post #109
SkyBelow wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>no matter the medium, or means or relative notoriety of the artist - shall be candidate training data Why is this a special case? When people were viewing it, reposting it, using it to learn... those were all accepted uses. Passing it off as your own wasn't allowed, but outright plagiarism has pretty consistently been unaccepted. The problem seems to stim from using it in a way that directly competes with the artist…

The tricky part is that the ongoing training of ever-more-interesting generative AI *depends* on the ongoing labor of artists. Proponents of the current economic model like to frame the artist rejection of AI as an obvious case of Luddism. Of course the artists reject this, it threatens their economic station! And: it's not even wrong. But, it is a high modernist foible: at some point the raw resource is fully exploi…

>The tricky part is that the ongoing training of ever-more-interesting generative AI depends on the ongoing labor of artists.

I think there is an ongoing issue. Much like how the privatization of the public domain has led to an ongoing issue of a large percent of our culture being privately owned. I'm not sure the fix to this.

I am by no means happy with the current situation, but I do find the moral reasoning behind the outrage at AI questionable at best as it doesn't seem to be consistent and instead based on what is economically beneficial to those showing outrage. By that same standard, AI is great because it lets me create things at a much cheaper cost.

Artist creating art of popular characters and AI using publicly posted art both seem pretty acceptable to me. Then again I'm the weirdo who goes to conventions to buy originals, the ones actually painted on canvas and not just easily reproducible prints, even though that does mean paying far more than the prints cost.

Re: Key Stable Diffusion Researchers Leave Stability AI as Company Flounders

#136

Post by uaserussia »

__loam wrote: post #126
uaserussia wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>ongoing training of even-more-interesting generative AI depends on the ongoing labor of artists. What does that mean? That you need artist to produce "even-more-interesting" art to train new iterations of generative AI? Could you point out some of these superfresh new art artist are doing that are completely different than things already done to exhaustion in the 1970s (other than anime)? I don't think you need arti…

[flagged]

My impartial assessment of reality is disgusting? lol that's like if someone says the sky is blue and a colorblind person tells that's a disgusting view.

Re: Key Stable Diffusion Researchers Leave Stability AI as Company Flounders

#137

Post by cdata »

SkyBelow wrote: post #135
cdata wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tricky part is that the ongoing training of ever-more-interesting generative AI *depends* on the ongoing labor of artists. Proponents of the current economic model like to frame the artist rejection of AI as an obvious case of Luddism. Of course the artists reject this, it threatens their economic station! And: it's not even wrong. But, it is a high modernist foible: at some point the raw resource is fully exploi…

>The tricky part is that the ongoing training of ever-more-interesting generative AI depends on the ongoing labor of artists. I think there is an ongoing issue. Much like how the privatization of the public domain has led to an ongoing issue of a large percent of our culture being privately owned. I'm not sure the fix to this. I am by no means happy with the current situation, but I do find the moral reasoning behind…

We are booking our tickets to Comic-Con. We tap through the form, maneuvering past the cumbersome AI-generated takeover promoting a new prestige TV show. The AIs are getting pretty good, and seem to have moved beyond the glassy-eyed doll faces characteristic of the Stable Diffusion era. Nevertheless, the ads are obnoxious and we can't wait to submit the form and get off of this website.

A memory rises unbidden: we once made comics and posted them to the web, free for all to read. We would even browse the web just to find and read them. Wild.

We find ourselves circuiting the convention hall. It is a brightly lit maze, festooned with endless AI-generated promotions for Marvel supers and yesteryear reboots. The cast of Friends is back, youthful as ever, and apparently we're getting at least three more seasons. We round a corner and..

Here. Yes, here. We remember it now. This whole row was once filled with tables showcasing prints and original works of art. Behind the tables: a spouse, a friend, or the artist in the flesh. Artists, who were remarkable in their day for their contributions to the great pop culture that drew us to the convention. Artists who, despite their labor and their infamy among certain fandoms, never appeared in a legible place on the credit roll. Artists who worked a day job for years, stocking shelves, packing boxes, approving Disney licensee merchandise, so that in the evening they might bend their weary backs, put pen to tablet and spill their imaginations across the screen. Artists who did all that so that we could come to Comic-Con today and appropriate for ourselves an original work of their art.

Where once there were artists, now there is Hello Kitty. Sanrio has taken over the whole row. You can walk up to Hello Kitty and ask it for any combination of officially licensed characters, with optional accessories if you have a few more dollars to spend. A 3D printer somewhere behind the booth's facade fabricates the bespoke toy on-demand in food-safe ABS. An original work of art.

Re: Key Stable Diffusion Researchers Leave Stability AI as Company Flounders

#138

Post by pclmulqdq »

stale2002 wrote: post #123
pclmulqdq wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All you'd have to do is go to any gaming/media/comic convention and this is immediately obvious. Most of the gaming/media/comic conventions I have been to have involved game/media/comic artists selling their own work, not people selling fan art. In fact, the presence of the original artists selling copies of their original works is generally a big draw for the convention. Maybe we go to different conventions or som…

> Also, nobody is currently suing (or particularly upset) over people making art on their home PCs Nobody is suing because few people have the resources to sue anyone, yes, but people are absolutely upset about all the AI art that is now on the internet. Much of which is entirely non commercial, in the same way that any other piece of online fan art is. But hey sure, if your position is that almost all of the online…

To be very clear: I support the prompters generating AI art under the same terms as fan art - you can do it for non-commercial purposes, but if you want to make money you have to get a license. I do not support the companies selling AI art models for commercial purposes without compensating the people whose work they used to train.

The NYT's lawyers and Getty's agree with me, by the way - they aren't suing users (and there are big users out there who could be worth suing).

Re: Key Stable Diffusion Researchers Leave Stability AI as Company Flounders

#139

Post by stale2002 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #138
stale2002 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, nobody is currently suing (or particularly upset) over people making art on their home PCs Nobody is suing because few people have the resources to sue anyone, yes, but people are absolutely upset about all the AI art that is now on the internet. Much of which is entirely non commercial, in the same way that any other piece of online fan art is. But hey sure, if your position is that almost all of the online…

To be very clear: I support the prompters generating AI art under the same terms as fan art - you can do it for non-commercial purposes, but if you want to make money you have to get a license. I do not support the companies selling AI art models for commercial purposes without compensating the people whose work they used to train. The NYT's lawyers and Getty's agree with me, by the way - they aren't suing users (and…

> I do not support the companies selling AI art models

Then you should be happy to know that the large majority of AI art models that matter are open source, or fine tuned open source models.

That's most of the space.

You support basically all AI art, which is much different than what most artists are complaining about.

And even if a few of those big companies go away, those models are still out there and available for users to generate from.

Re: Key Stable Diffusion Researchers Leave Stability AI as Company Flounders

#140

Post by zenlikethat »

liuliu wrote: post #46
xangel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CEO being a fraud could be a possible reason. Just saying.

You shouldn't judge people by what Forbes says, but what people do. So far, Emad delivers on what he promises (with some delays here and there), and Stability.ai is the only one that publish image / video generation models at production quality.

I mean, you get a nose for people like that after a while. They all have common characteristics like self aggrandizement, making bold claims and then changing tune when caught, a history of burnt out and salty ex co workers. It’s not that hard to spot in this guy’s case.
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