Stability AI, the developer of the text-image model Stable Diffusion, has announced a subscription service to standardize the commercial use of its models.
The new subscription structure is designed to strike a balance between profitability and open source, Stability AI writes. According to Emad Mostaque, CEO of Stability AI, the models will still be published with code and weights for anyone to access.
Stability AI is known for its advocacy of open-source AI models. The company would remain true to that for personal use and research, but in the future, companies have to pay. Recently, there have been rumors about Stability AI's financial instability.
Three membership categories, two for commercial use of AI models
Stability AI offers three levels of membership: The first level, Non-Commercial, is free and intended for personal use and research. It provides access to all foundational models.
The second level, Professional, is available for $20 per month and is aimed at creatives, developers and start-ups with less than one million US dollars in annual revenue, one million US dollars in institutional funding, and one million active users. This tier allows self-hosted, commercial use of the basic models and access to the Discord community of the Professional tier.
The third tier, Enterprise, is designed for larger organizations and includes all the benefits of the Professional tier with adjusted pricing and additional enterprise features such as support and solution engineering.
The introduction of paid memberships is intended to fund future research and development of Stability AI's foundational models. Membership also provides early access to new AI models for all three tiers, but only members of the two paid tiers can use them commercially.
