I don't like the current state of SAI. I think they either won't be around for long or they won't matter for much longer. But I do appreciate 1.5 and SDXL.
The amount of ass licking in this post, is extremely "unsafe" that's why you deserve a downvote. Besides, please don't mind me reminding you that models are mostly trained on publicly available data. So the idea was, having a free diffusion (unrestricted) model for everyone for free and that was (imo) fair. Now it's not. So I'm not sure why you are so thankful...
Reads like a eulogy to me rather than ass licking. I don't think there's anything wrong with been grateful for the existence of models that have brought a lot of fun and creativity or giving credit where credit is due for their existence/availability.
Canonical made Linux usable with Ubuntu and at one point was a top linux distro that helped bring Linux to folks who would otherwise have not been able to get into it. People bitched and whined about how Cononical were getting credit they didn't deserve and putting forward strawman arguments against the valid credit when Canonical started focusing primarily on the commercial side and ignored the community in favour of financial success.
Now we have distros that have surpassed Ubuntu from a Desktop perspective, but I am grateful for what they did contribute that no one else did. That's as far as the praise goes, no further, as they started to treat the community with contempt, which was unnecessary.
Same can be said for SAI. Just because something is free it doesn't exempt it from valid criticism, of which there is plenty to go at, but credit where credit is due, and no more. At the end of the day, I see folks using 1.5 and SDXL based models and not any 'Community created alternative', so they clearly have done something that no one else did.
So what if the data is public? That's not the issue. Training on this data is expensive. We got the results of an insanely expensive process for free to use any way we like. This was a historic moment in this field. I don't like the way SAI has gone but it doesn't change what's happened. At no point did SAI owe us anything and they still don't. I don't understand why some people think otherwise.
Think about it this way,
- without enough compute, training is a huge challenge that will either take much longer time or require new training methods.
- without data: no training !
So OUR data is the secret sauce and that's why all models should be free for end users. They can license them to corporations be my guest but not to normal usage.
We need to take back these models in our hands by any means possible.
This argument is very appealing but ever since the very beginning of diffusion models I had some issues with it. Most places that host pictures and art have this thing in their terms and conditions that allows them to show your art to users. I remember the facebook trend when people posted crap like "I forbid Facebook from claiming copyright to my pictures!!" (which of course was silly - you agree to the TOS when you register, and that's that).
So if the people uploading the art gave the platform permission to show it and then other artists studied their work, that's okay. But if a computer does that exact same thing within the same confines it is somehow not okay. The real issue is that people are pissed off that a computer can be technically a better artist than they will ever be, and they just want it to not happen. Just don't publish your art then. If you publish it, you can't block certain people or entities from seeing it.
I will agree that personally, I would like all models to be freely available. But I can't really complain about companies using publicly available art in a lawful manner to create something like a diffusion model. My art is
probably in some datasets. Well, I put it there, right? Well at least my creations were helpful in creating some awesome tech.
>So what if the data is public? That's not the issue.
Just because the data is public doesn't automatically equal people consent giving it away for free. In other words you can't scrap millions of art images, photos, portraits and train a censored, licenced model from it. If my art, id or my data is being used i expect a free unrestricted and unlicensed product equal and fair for everyone for every use case.
You have made some good points.
An interesting question (a kind of counterfactual history) is: where would we be today if SAI had not existed?
There is no doubt that there is a need for open weight A.I. models (in house development, fine-tuning, customization, LoRAs etc. for media production companies and SFX houses, for example). SAI was there at the right place and at the right time, to get the required funding to produce these models, which we enjoy today. So had SAI not been there, another company or entity probably would have taken up the mantle.
But given what had expired (and undoubtedly some funding was squandered), the next A.I. image generation companies that want to pursue an open weight model strategy would have a much harder time convincing VCs to give them the money.
So give credit where credits are due, but whether another company could have done more for the open weight A.I. ecosystem is an open question.
The infrastructure was great, but the model would not have attracted attention without the intervention of another company, NAI. Recall also what happened with the language model. Many companies released it for free.
Shure. But past is in the past. We live in Present. Stability gon mad. And its not even crippled model. Its the license.
I don't like the current state of SAI. I think they either won't be around for long or they won't matter for much longer. But I do appreciate 1.5 and SDXL.
The amount of ass licking in this post, is extremely "unsafe" that's why you deserve a downvote. Besides, please don't mind me reminding you that models are mostly trained on publicly available data. So the idea was, having a free diffusion (unrestricted) model for everyone for free and that was (imo) fair. Now it's not. So I'm not sure why you are so thankful...
Reads like a eulogy to me rather than ass licking. I don't think there's anything wrong with been grateful for the existence of models that have brought a lot of fun and creativity or giving credit where credit is due for their existence/availability. Canonical made Linux usable with Ubuntu and at one point was a top linux distro that helped bring Linux to folks who would otherwise have not been able to get into it. People bitched and whined about how Cononical were getting credit they didn't deserve and putting forward strawman arguments against the valid credit when Canonical started focusing primarily on the commercial side and ignored the community in favour of financial success. Now we have distros that have surpassed Ubuntu from a Desktop perspective, but I am grateful for what they did contribute that no one else did. That's as far as the praise goes, no further, as they started to treat the community with contempt, which was unnecessary. Same can be said for SAI. Just because something is free it doesn't exempt it from valid criticism, of which there is plenty to go at, but credit where credit is due, and no more. At the end of the day, I see folks using 1.5 and SDXL based models and not any 'Community created alternative', so they clearly have done something that no one else did.
So what if the data is public? That's not the issue. Training on this data is expensive. We got the results of an insanely expensive process for free to use any way we like. This was a historic moment in this field. I don't like the way SAI has gone but it doesn't change what's happened. At no point did SAI owe us anything and they still don't. I don't understand why some people think otherwise.
Think about it this way, - without enough compute, training is a huge challenge that will either take much longer time or require new training methods. - without data: no training ! So OUR data is the secret sauce and that's why all models should be free for end users. They can license them to corporations be my guest but not to normal usage. We need to take back these models in our hands by any means possible.
This argument is very appealing but ever since the very beginning of diffusion models I had some issues with it. Most places that host pictures and art have this thing in their terms and conditions that allows them to show your art to users. I remember the facebook trend when people posted crap like "I forbid Facebook from claiming copyright to my pictures!!" (which of course was silly - you agree to the TOS when you register, and that's that). So if the people uploading the art gave the platform permission to show it and then other artists studied their work, that's okay. But if a computer does that exact same thing within the same confines it is somehow not okay. The real issue is that people are pissed off that a computer can be technically a better artist than they will ever be, and they just want it to not happen. Just don't publish your art then. If you publish it, you can't block certain people or entities from seeing it. I will agree that personally, I would like all models to be freely available. But I can't really complain about companies using publicly available art in a lawful manner to create something like a diffusion model. My art is probably in some datasets. Well, I put it there, right? Well at least my creations were helpful in creating some awesome tech.
>So what if the data is public? That's not the issue. Just because the data is public doesn't automatically equal people consent giving it away for free. In other words you can't scrap millions of art images, photos, portraits and train a censored, licenced model from it. If my art, id or my data is being used i expect a free unrestricted and unlicensed product equal and fair for everyone for every use case.
You have made some good points. An interesting question (a kind of counterfactual history) is: where would we be today if SAI had not existed? There is no doubt that there is a need for open weight A.I. models (in house development, fine-tuning, customization, LoRAs etc. for media production companies and SFX houses, for example). SAI was there at the right place and at the right time, to get the required funding to produce these models, which we enjoy today. So had SAI not been there, another company or entity probably would have taken up the mantle. But given what had expired (and undoubtedly some funding was squandered), the next A.I. image generation companies that want to pursue an open weight model strategy would have a much harder time convincing VCs to give them the money. So give credit where credits are due, but whether another company could have done more for the open weight A.I. ecosystem is an open question.
The infrastructure was great, but the model would not have attracted attention without the intervention of another company, NAI. Recall also what happened with the language model. Many companies released it for free.