from Hacker News

The company behind Stable Diffusion appears to be crumbling into chaos

by josephjrobison on 8/9/23, 11:54 PM with 82 comments

• by syrusakbary on 8/10/23, 12:44 AM

  What is this article really about? So many details missing about the $70k bill to assume is the wrongdoing of the CEO or company.

  The article smells like someone wants to build an argument against Stable Diffusion.

  I don't think that any of the arguments on the article hold to imply that Stable Diffusion (company) is crumbling.

  As an example, the "I sold 15% of the stake for $100" argument from the previous cofounder doesn't hold unless proven otherwise by a judge. The context always matter: is not the same selling 15% when there were no investors or IP, to selling it under coercion... but that a judge will be way better to assess than people external to the matter.

  I wonder what's the gain behind publishing this kind of "yellow" articles (and to whom)

• by Bjorkbat on 8/10/23, 1:29 AM

  This article is merely summarizing a longer article at Bloomberg, in case anyone would like to read something more substantial.

  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-08/stability...

• by shicholas on 8/10/23, 2:07 AM

  This company may get sued out of existence thanks to Getty Images. I think those advocating for responsible AI should root for Getty in their lawsuit.

  https://www.reuters.com/legal/getty-images-lawsuit-says-stab...

• by fortran77 on 8/10/23, 2:11 AM

  I like Stable Diffusion! It can run even on old NVIDIA cards (like a 1080) and is truly open source (unlike other companies with "open" in their name). I hope it, or something like it survives.

• by klabb3 on 8/10/23, 4:08 AM

  > A particularly eyebrow-raising claim […] is that the 40-year-old CEO has claimed he was employed as a spy for the British government. He also insists that he's spoken to more than one prime minister about building AI for nation-states.

  > Earlier this summer, Forbes published an exposé that highlighted his "history of exaggeration," and in its opening lines notes that Mostaque's claim that he has a master's degree from Oxford didn't hold up to scrutiny.

  Those statements are very precise and can really only be true or false. I can’t verify the veracity, but if they’re false, he is lying, not embellishing or “exaggerating”.

  There is a forgiving attitude towards compulsive liars in tech startups, and perhaps business in general, but that’s a cultural decease. There is no reason for journalists to play along in shifting the Overton window way into this kafkaesque relativistic worldview dictated by a small group of sociopaths and their enablers.

• by mikhailfranco on 8/10/23, 6:14 AM

  Oxford confers an honorary MA to any bachelor's graduate who applies. No extra work or exam is required.

  https://www.new.ox.ac.uk/oxford-ma-0

  The only question is whether Emad applied and was awarded the MA.

• by HanClinto on 8/10/23, 3:27 AM

  I don't like hit-piece journalism like this.

• by sinuhe69 on 8/10/23, 4:18 AM

  The CEO to the side, how is the business side of Stability AI? I believe it’s hard to build a business on open-source AI at this stage. Perhaps through rendering services to other or awaiting for selling themselves? Meta can open sourced their models and weights because they make tons of money from other sources but a startup can only burn investors’ money, though.

  For the community, open-source AI is a blessing, no question.

• by xchip on 8/10/23, 6:57 PM

  I'll file this in the folder where I store similar apocalyptic articles. We heard the same about Google, nvidia, Microsoft... And yet we have a new one.

• by throwoutway on 8/10/23, 1:40 PM

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