Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

"borrow" other people's code to build a $1 billion empire?

Emad Mostaque, founder of Stablity AI, has recently been skinned by Forbes!

Forbes revealed in a long article that the source code of Stable Diffusion, which made Stability AI famous, was actually written by another group of researchers.

Before the release of Stable Diffusion, scholars from Germany and start-up company Runway jointly launched an open source image generator called Latent Diffusion.

And Mostaque took someone else's work and wrote his name on it-- that's where Stable Diffusion came from.

After "stealing" other people's work, Emad Mostaque used his excellent verbal skills to transform Stability AI into a start-up valued at $1 billion.

Moreover, after interviewing more than 30 people (including current employees, former employees, investors, former colleagues, etc.) and looking through various promotional materials and internal documents, Forbes found that he also had many black spots such as fake academic qualifications and work experience. I completely exaggerated my personal role.

And this storm caused a lot of attention in the circle, machine learning expert Sebastian also jumped out and said: no, no, This is a boomerang.

In his academic blog as early as 2022, he pointed out that Stability AI's work is actually based on Latent Diffusion.

The real hero behind Stable Diffusion came in 2021 when a team of German researchers teamed up with startup Runway to launch an open source image model called Latent Diffusion (potential Diffusion).

The team of researchers included scholars from the University of Munich (LMU) and the University of Heidelberg, led by Professor Bj ö rn Ommer.

According to Professor Bj ö rn Ommer, only a few dozen Nvidia GPU were used for Latent Diffusion's training.

Seven months later, in June 2022, Mostaque reached out to them, and Stability AI provided them with the excess they needed.

With the improvement of computing power, the performance of Latent Diffusion has been significantly improved.

Unexpectedly, in August, the new model was named Stable Diffusion and released under the name Stability AI.

In a press release issued by Stability AI, Mostaque called Stable Diffusion "the most popular open source software ever."

So, just by providing the power of calculation, the work of others will become your own?

In response, a former employee of Stability AI said of Mostaque: "he is very good at taking other people's work, signing his own name, or using it to do things that cannot be verified." "

The outside world can't control which is right and which is wrong.

Within days of Stable Diffusion's launch, Stability AI received $100 million in investment from two companies called Coatue and Lightspeed. The investment is eight times the amount previously raised by Mostaque.

This round of financing directly valued Stability AI at more than $1 billion, even though the company was not yet profitable at the time.

Subsequent press releases only said that the company behind Stable Diffusion was Stability AI and made no mention of the contribution of the German team or Runway.

Professor Ommer, of course, was unhappy about this. He wanted his lab to be publicized, but his university's journalism department was on vacation.

Professor Ommer said in an interview with Forbes, "as far as I know, when we released Latent Diffusion, Stability AI didn't know about it at all. They jumped into the carriage later. "

Bishara, a spokesman for Stability, said the company had publicly mentioned the contributions of LMU and Runway several times on its website and on Stable Diffusion's GitHub page.

(the above two GitHub projects released by Stability AI are the first generation and the second generation respectively. You can see that LMU's contribution counts as your win.)

(there is no denying that Stability AI did mention LMU in its announcement on August 10, 2022.) but the German team did not agree, believing that Mostaque had misled the public in the press release.

Professor Ommer said: "what I have learned from this lesson is that if your company has a strong news department, you can change the facts and reshape history at will. "

To make matters worse, in October, Stability AI retaliated, claiming that a new version of Stable Diffusion released by Runway had stolen its own intellectual property.

Crist ó bal Valenzuela, founder of Runway, hit back unbearably: this technology is open source, and there is no possibility of copyright infringement.

Mostaque later withdrew the charges and later explained to Forbes that he was worried about the lack of guardrails in the version of the Runway model.

Both Professor Ommer and Valenzuela are very disappointed with Mostaque-"they have entered the field we have studied for many years as newcomers, and then they turn around and have the honor they should not belong to." "

Now, Professor Ommer's lab and Runway have stopped working with Stability AI.

Forbes long Stability AI became a $1 billion company with the help of a viral AI text-to-image generator and-per interviews with more than 30 people-some misleading claims from founder Emad Mostaque.Stability AI became a $1 billion company with the help of a viral AI text-to-image generator, and-according to interviews with more than 30 people-founder Emad Mostaque made some misleading statements.

In this skinning article, Forbes describes Mostaque in a sarcastic tone.

He started the contemporary Renaissance and set off the AI gold rush.

He is the holder of a master's degree from Oxford University, an award-winning hedge fund manager, a trusted partner of the United Nations and the founder of the technology behind Stable Diffusion.

He is the face of the wave of generative artificial intelligence, and he dreams of changing Hollywood, democratizing education and defeating PowerPoint. He hopes to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

It can be said that in last year's AIGC wave, the most eye-catching double stars were ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion.

According to Mostaque, it was his own company's Stable Diffusion that made OpenAI see the potential of the AI model, so OpenAI followed and hurriedly put ChatGPT on the shelves, which triggered the gold rush that followed.

But Forbes peeled Mostaque mercilessly: he didn't get a master's degree from Oxford, only a bachelor's degree; the hedge fund went bankrupt a year later; the United Nations didn't work with him for years; and Stable Diffusion's source code was written by another team.

In spite of this, he achieved real success.

Last summer, Stable Diffusion was all the rage. By October, Stable Diffusion's daily active users had reached 10 million.

In May this year, the White House nominated Stabiility, Microsoft and Nvidia as the seven leading AI developers to work with them on the federal AI security program.

He had dinner with Jeff Bezos, and retired Google founder Sergey Brin made a rare appearance at Stability AI's press conference.

The open source AI vision described by Mostaque fascinates many technical talents. Adobe's 20-year-old employee chose to leave and join Stability AI.

With fresh financing in the summer of 2022, more top talent followed, including a former vice president of research and development on Nvidia's board, a head of Google's brain, and three doctoral students from Ommer Labs.

Looking at this, did you find the Hua Dian?

Perhaps the reason why Mostaque can claim that Stable Diffusion is the work of its own company is due to the addition of these three doctoral students.

But the time they joined was after Stable Diffusion had been released.

Latent Diffusion thesis Co-work experience of Andreas Blattmann Forbes skinned Mostaque and found that he had carefully designed various strategies to enhance Stability AI's reputation and exaggerated his role in major AI projects. at the same time, the contributions of many researchers have been erased.

In addition, he also exaggerated the partnership with Amazon and the United Nations.

This has aroused the suspicion of some AI experts and investors.

Among some venture capitalists, Mostaque is raising hundreds of millions of dollars in cash at a valuation of $4 billion. It also claimed in October last year that the company's annual revenue had exceeded 10 million US dollars.

Clarification of Mostaque after the release of the Forbes report, one stone stirred up thousands of waves.

Mostaque also gave a quick interview and said he was "very sorry" for the Forbes report.

"Don't talk to people who ignore the facts and just want to induce the reader to click. "

At the same time, Mostaque wrote a blog post in response.

He said that with the growing popularity and influence of the company, it was not surprising that Forbes would write such an offensive article.

Although the team spent weeks trying to communicate with Forbes to correct the facts. But obviously, they chose to ignore the truth of the problem.

Blog address: https://emad.posthaven.com/on-setting-the-record-straight

Mostaque said that there are numerous errors and misinterpretations in this report, so it needs to be clarified here: (excerpt)

A degree from Oxford University

I didn't attend the graduation ceremony to get my degree, so technically, I don't have a bachelor's degree or a master's degree.

So far, I have paid 60 pounds and will receive these degrees by mail next month.

The issue of academic qualifications can be said to be very important. After all, if you really want to find out about fraud, it will be a big melon. Not surprisingly, that's what VB asked in the interview:

VB: you mean you have completed all the courses for your master's degree, but you just didn't send a check to get your degree? I just want to be clear about what you mean.

Mostaque: yes. I didn't attend the graduation ceremony, nor did I send a form for them to mail me their degree, so strictly speaking, I have neither a bachelor's degree nor a master's degree.

Stable Diffusion

We have publicly stated many times that Stability AI is a collaborator in the development of the first version of Stable Diffusion, along with LMU's computer and Vision Learning Group and Runway.

Details of the partnership have been shared publicly on Stable Diffusion's Github and Stability AI websites since its launch.

In addition, three of the five authors of the paper work at Stability AI. And the best way to solve this problem is to continue to work.

The payment of wages

We did have some delays, but all of them were quickly corrected-I personally paid my employees, including waiting for funding from government programs.

We also pay additional wages to the affected employees to compensate for possible inconvenience and to pay any related expenses they may incur, such as overdrafts.

Since the end of 2021, there have been no unpaid wages in normal operation. All the problems were solved quickly.

When you open your mouth when you go out, everything else depends on boasting. According to Forbes, Mostaque didn't tell the truth about his academic qualifications.

Real: Mostaque graduated from Oxford in 2005 with a bachelor's degree.

Lip version: "I am a master!" "

How the Bishara works: the boss "intends" to apply, and the Oxford MA can be awarded directly to alumni without having to take graduate courses. "No accident", the boss will be a "real" master in July!

"he's really good at making up stories," says JP Smith, a fund manager from Switzerland. "

Smith recruited Mostaque to Ecstrat as a consultant, and later Mostaque joined the Capricorn hedge fund.

Since then, Mostaque has been boasting that he helped the general of the building, turned the tide and saved the jailed company.

But in fact, Mostaque doesn't have that much power at all.

Damon Hoff, co-founder of Capricorn, says Mostaque's performance is not good at all, and the 330m fund will be gone in 2018.

With the explosion of generative AI, Mostaque's mindset began to come alive again.

For a person who will cheat by making up stories, how can this tuyere be missed?

With various marketing tactics and exaggerated narratives, he successfully positioned Stability AI as one of the leading unicorn AI companies in the world.

To achieve this goal, Mostaque began to "deceive" investors, claiming that Stability AI was assembling one of the world's 10 largest supercomputers.

He touted himself as a right-hand man for AI researchers, generously willing to provide money, and lent future supercomputing to AI developers to help them compete with Google, OpenAI and other technology giants.

The supercalculation to be built, he says, consists of thousands of Nvidia's state-of-the-art GPU, which was bought at an 80 per cent discount from Amazon.

But Bratin Saha, who works for the Seattle tech giant, says what Stability AI is building is no different from their other customers.

Moreover, Amazon has threatened Stability AI to revoke its access to Amazon GPU.

The reason is very simple-not enough money, owed millions.

On the issue of arrears, the reporter asked Stability AI to clarify.

They had no choice but to admit it.

And Mostaque's previously declared "two-fold" GPU is actually a standard discount offered by Amazon to all customers who have long committed to lease.

Bishara said that with the support of Amazon AWS, any payment program is managed in an orderly manner.

In fact, Stability AI describes Midjourney as part of its ecology, and the idea that it co-creates the product and organizes the user community is complete nonsense.

David Holz, founder of Midjourney, said that apart from a small donation from Mostaque, Midjourney and Stability AI had nothing to do with it.

Other employees said that Mostaque boasted of its cooperation with international organizations such as UNESCO, OECD, World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, which were not involved in the follow-up development of Stability AI at all.

In response to this claim, Bishara said that Mostaque did not say such a thing. But these organizations are indeed Stability AI partners.

In response to Bishara's statement, a spokesman for UNESCO said that the organization had nothing to do with Stability AI. Other organizations have also come forward to confirm that Mostaque is complete nonsense.

At this point, Bishara couldn't say a word.

Of course, if you don't give it to the company in arrears, you have to see the pro-employees. Among the employees who have already left, plus those who have not yet left, 7 have reported to Forbes that wages are always delayed, and there are cases of non-payment, sometimes for as long as a month.

Five other internal employees said that there had been wage delays and deferred payments for such a long time from 2020 to 2023.

Even British tax authorities have been here, threatening to seize assets if they don't pay their taxes.

Eric, a former intern who also reported wage arrears, said, "I'm still waiting for a sum of money that should have been reimbursed to me last August." "

In response, Bishara said that the situation has improved, and Stability AI has not recorded any non-payment in normal operations since 2021. However, it cannot be ruled out that the late payment of wages is caused by some special "external reasons".

The interns in arrears above are reimbursed, and Bishara said it is currently being checked.

It's hard to believe or disbelieve Bishara's words. But the financial problems that have arisen cannot be covered up.

To make matters worse, tens of thousands of pounds were transferred from Stability AI's corporate account to Mostaque's wife's personal account, according to Forbes trading screenshots.

However, Bishara has an argument, saying that the Mostaque couple provided a loan to the company in the first place, so the deal is actually reasonable.

"the company is making progress and the finance is following up," he said. We re-conducted a comprehensive reconciliation and launched a new financial team with more experience. All arrears related to the Mostaque couple will have been settled in full by the end of 2022. "

A lawyer for Mostaque's wife Qureshi declined to answer any questions about the deal. But they issued a statement saying that Qureshi himself has been providing both emotional and financial support to Mostaque's business since 2021.

Qureshi's official position at Stability AI is the head of PR, but according to employee revelations (really pro-employees), Qureshi describes his job as COO (chief operating officer) at the company, even on his business card.

Not surprisingly, Bishara has something to say again.

He said that these business cards are designed for fun, and it is a friend who wants to use this to practice his business card design skills, but it is actually useless.

You see, if you want to say what PR can do, it depends on our Bishara.

At this time, another employee came to reveal the news. One current employee and four former employees said that Qureshi often scolded his subordinates in the company, and it was not without scolding and crying.

In response, Qureshi said that this is only because her management style is relatively direct, it is a pity that some people think that she is "targeting" them, and that her goal is not to make people cry.

Bishara said earlier that Qureshi would leave the company to pursue personal development and no longer serve on the board.

Of course, this sentence still looks like a fart. In the organization chart in early May, Qureshi was still the head of the foundation, equivalent to the position of Mostaque.

Copyright issue sued

Traditionally, venture capitalists spend months doing due diligence, designing market analysis, founder reviews, and communicating with clients.

Only after the process has been completed can we decide whether to invest or not.

But Mostaque said brazenly that it only takes six days to raise 100 million yuan.

"I really want to invest," said Gaurav Gupta, a partner at investment firm Lightspeed. We can see that this technology is really transformative, although we don't know all the scenarios in which it is used. "

Mostaque said in an interview that Stability AI is customizing AI models for dozens of customers, but he can only give two names.

One is Eros Investment, an Indian company whose media division has been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and has been accused of misleading investors.

The second is to provide 4 million tablets to children in the Republic of Malawi in Africa.

In terms of revenue, Mostaque said the company's annualized revenue was higher than the figure reported by the OpenAI.

But in fact, according to people familiar with the matter, Stability AI's ARR (annual recurrent income) is less than $10 million, spending more than it earns.

Like many AI startups, Stability AI is burning a lot of money and is in urgent need of a lot of money.

However, Mostaque said in January that his company had no problems raising money.

Bishara also said that the company still has a lot of reserves.

Despite the funding issue, Stability AI faces two more lawsuits, both related to the violation of the copyright law training model.

But the company rejected the appeal, saying it could not identify any specific examples of infringement.

Reference:

Https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2023/06/04/stable-diffusion-emad-mostaque-stability-ai-exaggeration/?sh=74d8c68575c5

Https://venturebeat.com/ai/stability-ceo-says-hes-sad-about-report-he-exaggerated-his-resume/

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Xin Zhiyuan (ID:AI_era)

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