Show HN: Stable Diffusion v2 web interface

[lumenwrites]

Great project!

I have a question - how can you afford to run this? I looked at the server costs on google compute and runpod.io, and the ones with GPUs powerful enough to run SD are pretty expensive. I'm guessing you don't have a lot of paying users at the beginning, so I don't think you have enough revenue to cover the costs (at least when you're just getting started).

Do you just spend a lot of money to fund this, and hope that once you have enough users it will pay for itself? Or did you find some affordable way to run a server? If yes, and if it's not a secret - where are you renting the server, what are its specs, and how much does it cost?

[synapticpaint]

On AWS, a g5 instance costs $1/hr. I can generate roughly 10 images per minute (should be able to get this down with some optimization), so 600 images per hour, so the cost per image is 1/6 of a cent, before adding overhead (idle time, start up/shut down).

Source: I run a similar project: https://synapticpaint.com/

I also offer dreambooth model training for around $2-$4 / model as well as inference on custom dreambooth models. Inference on custom models is where things get a little tricky because if users are using different models and you're loading up new models all the time just to generate 6 images, then that quickly becomes the majority of the work load, drastically pushing up the inference cost. I haven't solved this problem yet. If you have any great ideas, feel free to email me (email in profile)!

[jkbl]

At the beginning it was just burning money, but it stars to turn into profit.

The only secret to making it affordable is to autoscale based on a current image generation traffic. It runs on a mix of Tesla V100 and RTX 3090 from runpod.io vast.ai and Lambda Labs.

I actually went through a couple of iterations with it, starting as completely free service, then offering one time payments for image credits and now settled on subscriptions as I see there is a demand for the product. Especially AI Editor[1] which I think offers a unique value to the users.

[1] https://getimg.ai/editor

[nacs]

Stable diffusion only needs 4GB of VRAM to run on the low end so you can rent low-end consumer GPUs (nvidia RTX for example) for around $0.10 an hour to do the renders.

[raymond_goo]

https://vast.ai/ (not affiliated)

[permanent]

I'd love to know this as well.

[tuhins]

cool, great to see more and more of these coming up!

you can also check out our demo for Stable Diffusion v2. it's free to use, with no email sign-in required and no credit system.

https://app.baseten.co/apps/VBlnMVP/operator_views/nBrd8zP

[mechanical_bear]

Verify email? No thanks.

[russellbeattie]

Exactly. Put that bullshit up front before I waste time entering a prompt so I know not to bother.

[Hoefner]

I can’t even register with my own email domain because of “We do not support disposable email addresses!” error

[jkbl]

It's a measure to prevent multi accounts. Some people really overuse free offering. Either your domain/IP is on a spam list or your email server may be misconfigured.

[IceHegel]

Wow v2 seems worse than v1.5.

[kyleyeats]

They took out a bunch of artist references, and a bunch of celebrities. The two things that made SD stand out. It's no longer the fun one.

[frobolo]

Agreed. I like making abstract stuff, much more fun to be had with v1.5.

[thundergolfer]

If you prefer interacting with v2 via code, Erik Bernhardsson got v2 running on https://modal.com in 20 minutes, and it'd take 5 minutes to copy and run his Github gist: https://twitter.com/bernhardsson/status/1595960120021696512.

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To OP, I reckon you should allow 1 generation before hitting us with the login prompt. May lift conversion.

[LegitShady]

Personally, having played around with both for only an hour with identical prompts, v1.5 seems to get better results.

[joe_the_user]

It seems like v2 is more photorealistic but it more often fails to follow any complex prompt.

[NVQXE23I]

Came here to point out that my personal email is wrongfully listed as a disposable email address. It must be that it's a three letter url with a .nl TLD.

Maybe take a look at your mail checking API?

[_Microft]

Requires login.

Saying that it requires login before someone spends time to think up a description for an image would have been nice (because I won't sign-in to try something anyways).

Edit: rephrased to remove overly negative language.

[jkbl]

I don't see this as baiting. The link to a tool page was shared. It's transparent on the homepage and in the header. The text to image page just shows how it works without the need to create an account.

[davidkunz]

This site doesn't require a login: https://tinybots.net/artbot?model=stable_diffusion_2.0

Posted by @davely today.

[kburman]

I hate it when website hide login popup until user click on action button. It's such a dark pattern.

[ftufek]

FWIW, you're not the only one. On our product, we experimented adding login when the user tries to use any of our tools and something like ~60-70% of users dropped off. So essentially, whoever implements that is killing their user funnel at the very beginning which I'm guessing will have larger effects down the road (fewer users experience "magical moments" which leads to less word-of-mouth, etc).

On the flip side though, I'm sure it may help metrics in the short term especially since it's expensive to offer a service like this (which requires expensive GPU servers).

[ShamelessC]

Proof that people just upvote stuff with stable diffusion in the title without clicking the link or taking more than a cursory glance.

[devxpy]

Shameless plug - We don’t require logging in!

https://app.gooey.ai/CompareText2Img/?example_id=1uONp1IBt0Y

[mrkeen]

Does it generate images though? I gave it a prompt around an hour ago and it's still just spinning.

[Traubenfuchs]

But do you allow high res nsfw Emma Watson prompts?

[88stacks]

Here is another that is free AND allows you to create your own custom model: https://88stacks.com yes it does require a login

[mlu509]

Wow. That’s pretty fast!