Stability AI, the company behind the popular image-generation engine Stable Diffusion, has announced a significant change to its licensing agreement. The updated terms expand the free tier and eliminate restrictions on the number of generated images. The company also revealed enhancements to its current model, addressing concerns raised by the developer community.
In a blog post, Stability AI acknowledged that the initial commercial license associated with SD3 had caused confusion and concern among users. To address this, the company introduced the “Stability AI Community License.” This new license dramatically broadens the free use of its generative AI models, including the recently released Stable Diffusion 3 Medium (SD3M) model.
The Community License allows individuals and organizations to install and run Stability AI models on their own devices for non-commercial purposes, free of charge. This applies to hobbyists, researchers, developers, students, teachers, and even those who fine-tune the models to improve their performance.
Small businesses are also included in the free tier, as long as their total annual revenue remains below $1 million. These companies can use either an SD model directly or a customized version of it. For businesses exceeding this revenue threshold, an Enterprise license will be required.
Under the new licensing scheme, there are no limits on the number of images, videos, or audio content that can be generated using Stability AI models. The company has stated that, as long as users comply with its license and avoid illegal activities, they will not be asked to delete any generated content, even if they choose not to pay for an Enterprise license.
Beyond the license changes, Stability AI also addressed concerns about the performance of its SD3M model. The company acknowledged that, despite outperforming its predecessor during development and testing, the SD3M model exhibited issues with novel avatar poses and words uncommon in its training data. To address these flaws, Stability AI is working on a significantly improved version of the SD3M model, which is expected to be released in the coming weeks.
