Oblomovka on Stable Diffusion:
I understand that people worry that large models built on publicly-available data are basically corporations reselling the Web back to us, but out of all the examples to draw upon to make that point, Stable Diffusion isn’t the best. It’s one of the first examples of a model whose weights are open, and free to reproduce, modify and share
Most importantly, the tool itself is just data; SD 1.0 was about 4.2GiB of floating-point numbers… The ability to learn, condense knowledge, come to new conclusions, and empower people with that new knowledge, is what we do with the shared commonwealth of our creations every day.
Again, I understand if people are worried that, say, Google is going to build tools that only they use to extract money from our shared heritage… [Artists] should be empowered to create amazing works from new tools, just as they did with the camera, the television, the sampler and the VHS recorder, the printer, the photocopier, Photoshop, and the Internet. A 4.2GiB file isn’t a heist of every single artwork on the Internet, and those who think it is are the ones undervaluing their own contributions and creativity. It’s an amazing summary of what we know about art, and everyone should be able to use it to learn, grow, and create.