[stabilityfan1]

It would be a huge disaster to lose out on the folks releasing the models for free.

Nobody benefits from their failure.

If Runway and Stability can cut costs they will become cherished institutions.

[chii]

> cut costs

without a stable source of revenue, cutting costs mean nothing. What are they selling, and why isn't there buyers?

A business cannot survive without revenue, and revenue only comes from people who want to buy something from you that they cannot otherwise get else where.

I applaud StabilityAI for releasing SD for free. They could've done what openAI did, and monetized it (which other diffusion model services are doing). By releasing it for free, stabilityAI contributed to the common good. Unfortunately, if there's nothing else that can be sold as a product, they cannot be sustainable.

An alternative, which i'm not too big a fan of, is collectivization of AI models, and make it a global commons for which taxpayers will fund.

[zamnos]

They could have at least charged money for it. "I'll give you this 4 GiB model file for $50" might have been a better business model than "lemme give this to you for free!".

[qeternity]

> releasing the models for free

...

> cut costs

Unless they can cut costs to zero, something has to change.