Stability.AI, a UK-based startup famous (or notorious?) for releasing the Stable Diffusion image generation model, just raised $100m on a $1bn valuation.
Their goal is to “Democratize AI.” They have done so by open-sourcing the Stable Diffusion text-to-image model and are working on releasing other models, including large language models.
This approach is in stark contrast to the one taken by OpenAI, Facebook, Google, etc. These companies have gated access to ML models like GPT-3 via APIs or invite-only programs. The reasoning is that these models could be used to generate hateful text and images and are generally too dangerous to be released to the ignorant masses.
In a recent interview, Emad Mostaque, the CEO of Stability.Ai and a fascinating thinker, talks about the inevitability of generative and large language models leaking out to the wild. He wants to focus on giving people a framework for the ethical use of AI while giving them the tools to build and train models for their specific uses.
Stability.Ai has struck a deal with Eros Interactive to get access to their massive library of Indian content. Can you imagine what could be trained using that data?
Congratulations to Stability.Ai. I am curious about what this more open (or perhaps reckless?) approach to ML will bring us.
