On Tuesday, Stability AI introduced that famend filmmaker James Cameron—of Terminator and Skynet fame—has joined its board of administrators. Stability is finest recognized for its pioneering however extremely controversial Secure Diffusion collection of AI image-synthesis fashions, first launched in 2022, which might generate photographs primarily based on textual content descriptions.
“I’ve spent my profession in search of out rising applied sciences that push the very boundaries of what’s potential, all within the service of telling unimaginable tales,” mentioned Cameron in an announcement. “I used to be on the forefront of CGI over three many years in the past, and I’ve stayed on the innovative since. Now, the intersection of generative AI and CGI picture creation is the following wave.”
Cameron is maybe finest generally known as the director behind blockbusters like Avatar, Titanic, and Aliens, however in AI circles, he could also be most related for the co-creation of the character Skynet, a fictional AI system that triggers nuclear Armageddon and dominates humanity within the Terminator media franchise. Related fears of AI taking on the world have since jumped into actuality and not too long ago sparked makes an attempt to control existential threat from AI methods via measures like SB-1047 in California.
In a 2023 interview with CTV information, Cameron referenced The Terminator‘s launch yr when requested about AI’s risks: “I warned you guys in 1984, and also you didn’t hear,” he mentioned. “I feel the weaponization of AI is the largest hazard. I feel that we’ll get into the equal of a nuclear arms race with AI, and if we don’t construct it, the opposite guys are for positive going to construct it, and so then it’ll escalate.”
Hollywood goes AI
After all, Stability AI is not constructing weapons managed by AI. As an alternative, Cameron’s curiosity in cutting-edge filmmaking methods apparently drew him to the corporate.
“James Cameron lives sooner or later and waits for the remainder of us to catch up,” mentioned Stability CEO Prem Akkaraju. “Stability AI’s mission is to rework visible media for the following century by giving creators a full stack AI pipeline to deliver their concepts to life. We’ve got an unmatched benefit to realize this objective with a technological and inventive visionary like James on the highest ranges of our firm. This isn’t solely a monumental assertion for Stability AI, however the AI business general.”
Cameron joins different latest additions to Stability AI’s board, together with Sean Parker, former president of Fb, who serves as government chairman. Parker referred to as Cameron’s appointment “the beginning of a brand new chapter” for the corporate.
Regardless of important protest from actors’ unions final yr, parts of Hollywood are seemingly starting to embrace generative AI over time. Final Wednesday, we lined a deal between Lionsgate and AI video-generation firm Runway that can see the creation of a customized AI mannequin for movie manufacturing use. In March, the Monetary Occasions reported that OpenAI was actively exhibiting off its Sora video synthesis mannequin to studio executives.
Unstable occasions for Stability AI
Cameron’s appointment to the Stability AI board comes throughout a tumultuous interval for the corporate. Stability AI has confronted a collection of challenges this previous yr, together with an ongoing class-action copyright lawsuit, a troubled Secure Diffusion 3 mannequin launch, important management and workers modifications, and ongoing monetary issues.
In March, founder and CEO Emad Mostaque resigned, adopted by a spherical of layoffs. This got here on the heels of the departure of three key engineers—Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, and Dominik Lorenz, who’ve since based Black Forest Labs and launched a brand new open-weights image-synthesis mannequin referred to as Flux, which has begun to take over the r/StableDiffusion group on Reddit.
Regardless of the problems, Stability AI claims its fashions are broadly used, with Secure Diffusion reportedly surpassing 150 million downloads. The corporate states that 1000’s of companies use its fashions of their artistic workflows.
Whereas Secure Diffusion has certainly spawned a big group of open-weights-AI picture fans on-line, it has additionally been a lightning rod for controversy amongst some artists as a result of Stability initially educated its fashions on a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of photographs scraped from the Web with out in search of licenses or permission to make use of them.
Apparently that affiliation will not be a priority for Cameron, in accordance with his assertion: “The convergence of those two completely completely different engines of creation [CGI and generative AI] will unlock new methods for artists to inform tales in methods we might have by no means imagined. Stability AI is poised to steer this transformation.”
On Tuesday, Stability AI introduced that famend filmmaker James Cameron—of Terminator and Skynet fame—has joined its board of administrators. Stability is finest recognized for its pioneering however extremely controversial Secure Diffusion collection of AI image-synthesis fashions, first launched in 2022, which might generate photographs primarily based on textual content descriptions.
“I’ve spent my profession in search of out rising applied sciences that push the very boundaries of what’s potential, all within the service of telling unimaginable tales,” mentioned Cameron in an announcement. “I used to be on the forefront of CGI over three many years in the past, and I’ve stayed on the innovative since. Now, the intersection of generative AI and CGI picture creation is the following wave.”
Cameron is maybe finest generally known as the director behind blockbusters like Avatar, Titanic, and Aliens, however in AI circles, he could also be most related for the co-creation of the character Skynet, a fictional AI system that triggers nuclear Armageddon and dominates humanity within the Terminator media franchise. Related fears of AI taking on the world have since jumped into actuality and not too long ago sparked makes an attempt to control existential threat from AI methods via measures like SB-1047 in California.
In a 2023 interview with CTV information, Cameron referenced The Terminator‘s launch yr when requested about AI’s risks: “I warned you guys in 1984, and also you didn’t hear,” he mentioned. “I feel the weaponization of AI is the largest hazard. I feel that we’ll get into the equal of a nuclear arms race with AI, and if we don’t construct it, the opposite guys are for positive going to construct it, and so then it’ll escalate.”
Hollywood goes AI
After all, Stability AI is not constructing weapons managed by AI. As an alternative, Cameron’s curiosity in cutting-edge filmmaking methods apparently drew him to the corporate.
“James Cameron lives sooner or later and waits for the remainder of us to catch up,” mentioned Stability CEO Prem Akkaraju. “Stability AI’s mission is to rework visible media for the following century by giving creators a full stack AI pipeline to deliver their concepts to life. We’ve got an unmatched benefit to realize this objective with a technological and inventive visionary like James on the highest ranges of our firm. This isn’t solely a monumental assertion for Stability AI, however the AI business general.”
Cameron joins different latest additions to Stability AI’s board, together with Sean Parker, former president of Fb, who serves as government chairman. Parker referred to as Cameron’s appointment “the beginning of a brand new chapter” for the corporate.
Regardless of important protest from actors’ unions final yr, parts of Hollywood are seemingly starting to embrace generative AI over time. Final Wednesday, we lined a deal between Lionsgate and AI video-generation firm Runway that can see the creation of a customized AI mannequin for movie manufacturing use. In March, the Monetary Occasions reported that OpenAI was actively exhibiting off its Sora video synthesis mannequin to studio executives.
Unstable occasions for Stability AI
Cameron’s appointment to the Stability AI board comes throughout a tumultuous interval for the corporate. Stability AI has confronted a collection of challenges this previous yr, together with an ongoing class-action copyright lawsuit, a troubled Secure Diffusion 3 mannequin launch, important management and workers modifications, and ongoing monetary issues.
In March, founder and CEO Emad Mostaque resigned, adopted by a spherical of layoffs. This got here on the heels of the departure of three key engineers—Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, and Dominik Lorenz, who’ve since based Black Forest Labs and launched a brand new open-weights image-synthesis mannequin referred to as Flux, which has begun to take over the r/StableDiffusion group on Reddit.
Regardless of the problems, Stability AI claims its fashions are broadly used, with Secure Diffusion reportedly surpassing 150 million downloads. The corporate states that 1000’s of companies use its fashions of their artistic workflows.
Whereas Secure Diffusion has certainly spawned a big group of open-weights-AI picture fans on-line, it has additionally been a lightning rod for controversy amongst some artists as a result of Stability initially educated its fashions on a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of photographs scraped from the Web with out in search of licenses or permission to make use of them.
Apparently that affiliation will not be a priority for Cameron, in accordance with his assertion: “The convergence of those two completely completely different engines of creation [CGI and generative AI] will unlock new methods for artists to inform tales in methods we might have by no means imagined. Stability AI is poised to steer this transformation.”
