Stability AI, maker of the text-to-image model Stable Diffusion, offers a subscription service that standardizes and changes how customers use its models for commercial purposes.
The company said the membership “redefines” how commercial rights are granted to users, with the aim of striking a balance between profitability and openness. Stability AI membership offers three levels. Free level for personal and research use. A $20/month subscription for “creators, developers, and startups with less than $1 million in annual revenue, less than $1 million in institutional funding, and less than 1 million active users.” And an enterprise plan. All three offer early access to new AI models, but only members of the two paid tiers are allowed for commercial use.
“As we continue to mature and scale, Stability AI membership will play a pivotal role in funding our future core model research and development,” the company said in a statement. . blog post. The Verge We reached out to Stability AI for more information, including previous support for commercial use.
So far, stability is distinguished by its openness. Stability CEO Emad Mostaq said: venture beat The company remains committed to releasing an “open model” with code and weights accessible to everyone. He compared the announcement to Meta’s Llama 2 release. Although Llama 2 is available for free on a variety of platforms, it is advertised as open source because it does not meet all the requirements of the Open Source Initiative’s open source definition.
However, a poster on the Stable Diffusion subreddit says expressed confusion What commercial use entails — does it apply only to those who use the model to create their own generative AI services, or does anyone who uses Stable Diffusion-generated images commercially pay a fee? Do I need to pay etc. This is further complicated by the fact that AI-generated works have traditionally been denied copyright protection and their value is uncertain.
mostake Approved by Xpreviously said on Twitter that the company was “still working on pricing to keep things simple.”
Stability AI already makes users pay for some models. In September, the company announced pricing for access to Stable Audio, its text-to-speech AI model.
Other AI companies also offer paid tiers that give you access to more features. OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus allows you to use more advanced GPT-4 models and faster response times.