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Apple Releases Open Weights Video Model

starflow-v.github.io

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Re: Apple Releases Open Weights Video Model

#141

Post by summerlight »

This looks interesting. This project has some novelty as a research and actually delivered a promising PoC but as a product it implies that its training was severely constrained by computing resources, which correlates well with the report that their CFO overruled CEO's decision on ML infra investment.

JG's recent departure and follow up massive reorg to get rid of AI, rumors on Tim's upcoming step down in early 2026... All of these signals indicate that those non-ML folks have won corporate politics to reduce the in-house AI efforts.

I suppose this was a part of serious efforts to deliver in-house models but the directional changes on AI strategy made them to give up. What a shame... At least the approach itself seem interesting and hope others to take a look and use it for building something useful.

Re: Apple Releases Open Weights Video Model

#142

Post by alwillis »

gostsamo wrote: post #49
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like how you framed this as the takeaway or learning that needs to happen as what should be in the alt and not a recitation of the image. Where I've often had issues is more for things like business charts and illustrations and less cute cat photos.

The logic stays the same though the answer is longer and not always easy. Just saying "business chart" is totally useless. You can make a choice on what to focus and say "a chart of the stock for the last five years with constant improvement and a clear increase by 17 percent in 2022" (if it is a simple point that you are trying to make) or you can provide an html table with the datapoints if there is data that the u…

Accessible info graphics [1]

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20130922065731/http://www.last-c...

Re: Apple Releases Open Weights Video Model

#143

Post by limagnolia »

RobotToaster wrote: post #15

The license[0] seems quite restrictive, limiting it's use to non commercial research. It doesn't meet the open source definition so it's more appropriate to call it weights available. [0] https://github.com/apple/ml-starflow/blob/main/LICENSE_MODEL

They haven't even released the weights yet...

As for the license, happily, Model Weights are the product of machine output and not creative works, so not copyrightable under US law. Might depend on where you are from, but I would have no problem using Model Weights however I want to and ignoring pointless licenses.

Re: Apple Releases Open Weights Video Model

#144

Post by limagnolia »

gorgoiler wrote: post #98

It’s not really relevant to this release specifically but it irks me that, in general, an “open weights model” is like an “open source machine code” version of Microsoft Windows. Yes, I guess I have open access to view the thing I am about to execute! This Apple license is click wrap MIT with the rights, at least, to modify and redistribute the model itself. I suppose I should be grateful for that much openness, at l…

I think you are looking at the code license, not the model license.

Re: Apple Releases Open Weights Video Model

#145

Post by alwillis »

MyFirstSass wrote: post #102
Workaccount2 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to understand that a lot of angst around AI comes from AI enabling people to do things that they formally needed to go through gatekeepers for. The angst is coming from the gatekeepers. AI has been a boon for me and my non-tech job. I can pump out bespoke apps all day without having to get bent on $5000/yr/usr engineering software packages. I have a website for my side business that looks and functions pr…

I highly doubt "pumping out bespoke apps all day" is possible yet besides 100% boilerplate, and when possible then no good for any other purpose than enshittifiying the web, and at that point not profitable because everyone can do it. I use AI daily as a senior coder for search and docs, and when used for prototyping you still need to be a senior coder to go from say 60% boilerplate to 100% finished app/site/whatever…

> I use AI daily as a senior coder for search and docs, and when used for prototyping you still need to be a senior coder to go from say 60% boilerplate to 100% finished app/site/whatever unless it's incredibly simple.

I know you would like to believe that, but with the tools available NOW, that's not necessarily the case. For example, by using the Playwright or Chrome DevTools MCPs, models can see the web app are it's being created and it's pretty easy to prompt them to fix something they can see.

These models know the current frameworks and coding practices but they do need some guidance; they're not mindreaders.

Re: Apple Releases Open Weights Video Model

#146

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

almosthere wrote: post #127
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same as the discussion about using Excel. Excel has its limitations, but it has enabled millions of people to do pretty sophisticated stuff without the help of “professionals”. Most of the stuff us tech people do is also basically some repetitive boilerplate. We just like to make things more complex than they need to be. I am always a little baffled why seemingly every little CRUD site that has at most 10…

The reality is too, that even if "what is acceptable" has not yet caught up to that guy working at Atlassian, polishing off a new field in Jira, people are using AI + Excel to manage their tasks EXACTLY the way their head works, not the way Jira works. Yet we fail to see AI as a good thing but just as a jobs destroyer. Are we "better than" the people that used to fill toothpaste tubes manually until a machine was inv…

I have told people that us techies have proudly killed the jobs of millions of people and we were arrogant about it. Now we are mad that it's our turn. Feels almost like justice :-)

Re: Apple Releases Open Weights Video Model

#147

Post by devinprater »

badmonster wrote: post #17
densh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a blind person, AI has changed my life. Something one doesn't see in news headlines. Happy to see this comment.

What other accessibility features do you wish existed in video AI models? Real-time vs post-processing?

Mainly realtime processing. I play video games, and would love to play something like Legend of Zelda and just have the AI going, then ask it "read the menu options as I move between them," and it would speak each menu option as the cursor moves to it. Or when navigating a 3D environment, ask it to describe the surroundings, then ask it to tell me how to get to a place or object, then it guide me to it. That could be useful in real-world scenarios too.

Re: Apple Releases Open Weights Video Model

#148

Post by devinprater »

fguerraz wrote: post #24
densh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a blind person, AI has changed my life. Something one doesn't see in news headlines. Happy to see this comment.

> Something one doesn't see in news headlines. I hope this wasn't a terrible pun

Nah, best pun ever!

Re: Apple Releases Open Weights Video Model

#149

Post by loufe »

limagnolia wrote: post #143
RobotToaster wrote: post #15

The license[0] seems quite restrictive, limiting it's use to non commercial research. It doesn't meet the open source definition so it's more appropriate to call it weights available. [0] https://github.com/apple/ml-starflow/blob/main/LICENSE_MODEL

They haven't even released the weights yet... As for the license, happily, Model Weights are the product of machine output and not creative works, so not copyrightable under US law. Might depend on where you are from, but I would have no problem using Model Weights however I want to and ignoring pointless licenses.

The weights for the text-->image model are already on Huggingface, FWIW.

Re: Apple Releases Open Weights Video Model

#150

Post by devinprater »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #9
devinprater wrote: post #6

Apple has a video understanding model too. I can't wait to find out what accessibility stuff they'll do with the models. As a blind person, AI has changed my life.

Can you share some ways AI has changed your life?

Image descriptions. TalkBack on Android has it built in and uses Gemini. VoiceOver still uses some older, less accurate, and far less descriptive ML model, but we can share images to Seeing AI or Be My Eyes and such and get a description.

Video descriptions, through PiccyBot, have made watching more visual videos or videos where things happen that don't make sense without visuals much easier. Of course, it'd be much better if YouTube incorporated audio description through AI the same way they do captions, but that may happen in a good 2 years or so. I'm not holding my breath. Google as a whole is hard to get accessibility out of more than the bare minimum.

Looking up information like restaurant menus. Yes it can make things up, but worst-case, the waiter says they don't have that.

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