[bugglebeetle]

Stable Diffusion was obviously never intended to make money, but as a Napster-style maneuver to enclose all image data on the internet through AI picture generation. They release something to the public that would get sued into oblivion were it done by an established company, but oops, the genie is out of the bottle, what you gonna do, the only choice now is to restrict it to a few power players who can actually do the necessary rights management. Artists and photographers will get the same shit deal musicians did in the streaming era, i.e. an algorithmically determined pittance for use of their work. Don’t like it? Oh well, either settle for that or people will fine-tune a pirate model on your work in half an hour!

[personjerry]

To put it politely, your comment is bullshit. Stability AI is a billion dollar company with hundreds of millions in funding.

[obmelvin]

Not saying I agree with the GP, but I don't understand how your comment refutes anything? Their valuation and funding doesn't necessarily mean anything.

In fact, I think one could argue that many companies raising that much money early on are indeed trying to become a first mover and don't care about making money (yet).

[bugglebeetle]

I would think the last decade or so of the tech industry would demonstrate otherwise? You could say the same about myriad other startups doing legally questionable things until regulators caught up with them or interest rates got raised. That someone throws piles of money at you and says your worth billions does not make that reality.

[refulgentis]

Motte and Bailey.

is it “company was planned vehicle for Napster except freeing images not music”

Or is it “an instance of companies wasting money because ZIRP and some companies are bad like some stuff I disagree with that happened at Uber”

[bugglebeetle]

Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Uber pursued both of these strategies (and lost massive amounts of money while breaking laws), but with a net benefit to their investors by weakening labor protections and other regulations.

[swyx]

100 million, actually. and Semafor seems to be asserting that most of it has been spent in the last 6 months since they raised it.