The corporation announced that its AI research will be funded in the future through paid tiers. Creators of the text-to-image model Stable Diffusion and Stability AI have introduced a subscription service that modifies and standardizes how customers can utilize their models for commercial purposes.
To find a happy medium between transparency and profit, the business claimed that the membership “redefines” how it distributes commercial rights to users. An enterprise plan, a $20/month plan for “creators, developers, and startups with less than $1 million in annual revenue, $1 million in institutional funding, and one million active users,” and a free plan for personal and research use are the three levels of membership that Stability AI offers. Although all three provide “early access to new AI models,” the two paid tiers allow members to use these models for commercial purposes.
In a blog post, the company expressed gratitude for the Stability AI Membership, stating that it will support its “future research and development of core models” as they grow and expand. Stability
Up until now, stability has been defined by its transparency. According to Venture Beat’s interview with Emad Mostaque, CEO of Stability, the firm is still dedicated to publishing “open models” where anyone can access the code and weights. He likened this announcement to Meta’s Llama 2, a program that is said to be open source since it is freely available on various platforms. Still, it only fulfills some of the criteria the Open Source Initiative set out for open-source software.
However, members of the Stable Diffusion subreddit have voiced their uncertainty regarding the scope of commercial use. They wonder, for example, if this exclusion applies solely to individuals developing their generative AI services or if there will be a fee associated with any commercial use of Stable Diffusion-generated images. The lack of copyright protection for AI-generated work thus far further complicates matters, as it makes the value of such work uncertain.
The company “is still figuring out pricing to keep it simple,” Mostaque admitted on X (formerly Twitter). Users are already being charged for certain models on Stability AI. Stable Audio, its artificial intelligence model that can convert text to audio, was made public with a pricing structure in September.
Like other AI companies, some offer premium plans that unlock additional features. The enhanced GPT-4 model and quicker response times are available to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus users.
