More context: https://old.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/y99yb1/a_s...

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RunwayML, who co-authored the StableDiffusion paper and funded CompVis together with StabilityAI, have unilaterally released the newest model of StableDiffusion, version 1.5. It seems that this was done without StabilityAIs consent, who so far have held the finished model back to supposedly prune it of NSFW stuff. This is criticized by many and accusations exist that they are only doing this to make more money as the 1.5 model has been available for quite some time on their own website against a usage fee. Do note however that the 1.5 model has only very minor improvements over the 1.4 model.

The link to the model can be found here: https://huggingface.co/runwayml/stable-diffusion-v1-5

The release was accompanied by the following tweet from RunwayML:

https://twitter.com/runwayml/status/1583109275643105280

This was followed by an accusing statement by a - now confirmed to be fake - account claiming to be Patrick Esser:

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1023643945319792731...

The model was released under the following license which indicates that RunwayML were legally allowed to release the model:

Use-based restrictions as referenced in paragraph 5 MUST be included as an enforceable provision by You in any type of legal agreement (e.g. a license) governing the use and/or distribution of the Model or Derivatives of the Model, and You shall give notice to subsequent users You Distribute to, that the Model or Derivatives of the Model are subject to paragraph 5. This provision does not apply to the use of Complementary Material. You must give any Third Party recipients of the Model or Derivatives of the Model a copy of this License; You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that You changed the files; You must retain all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Model, Derivatives of the Model. You may add Your own copyright statement to Your modifications and may provide additional or different license terms and conditions - respecting paragraph 4.a. - for use, reproduction, or Distribution of Your modifications, or for any such Derivatives of the Model as a whole, provided Your use, reproduction, and Distribution of the Model otherwise complies with the conditions stated in this License.

Trademarks and related. Nothing in this License permits You to make use of Licensors’ trademarks, trade names, logos or to otherwise suggest endorsement or misrepresent the relationship between the parties; and any rights not expressly granted herein are reserved by the Licensors.

The license can be found here: https://huggingface.co/spaces/CompVis/stable-diffusion-licen...

This was followed by a takedown notice from StabilityAI:

Company StabilityAI has requested a takedown of this published model characterizing it as a leak of their IP

While we are awaiting for a formal legal request, and even though Hugging Face is not knowledgeable of the IP agreements (if any) between this repo owner (RunwayML) and StabilityAI, we are flagging this repository as having potential/disputed IP rights.

The takedown notice can be found here: https://huggingface.co/runwayml/stable-diffusion-v1-5/discus...

This was followed by a statement from RunwayML in that same thread:

Hi all,

Cris here - the CEO and Co-founder of Runway. Since our founding in 2018, we’ve been on a mission to empower anyone to create the impossible. So, we’re excited to share this newest version of Stable Diffusion so that we can continue delivering on our mission.

This version of Stable Diffusion is a continuation of the original High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models work that we created and published (now more commonly referred to as Stable Diffusion). Stable Diffusion is an AI model developed by Patrick Esser from Runway and Robin Rombach from LMU Munich. The research and code behind Stable Diffusion was open-sourced last year. The model was released under the CreativeML Open RAIL M License.

We confirm there has been no breach of IP as flagged and we thank Stability AI for the compute donation to retrain the original model.

Emad, CEO of StabilityAI, has come forward on the official StableDiffusion discord stating that they are okay with the release and have taken down the takedown notice:

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1015751613840883735...

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1015751613840883735...

Emad also says they didn't send the takedown request: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1032745835781423234/1...