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It was recently reported that Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque is parting ways with the company behind the widely used AI tool Stable Diffusion to pursue his interests in decentralized AI. The company confirmed his resignation and simultaneous departure from the board in a press release late Friday.
Stability AI, which is backed by investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Coatue Management, does not have an immediate permanent successor for the top role. The company has appointed COO Shan Shan Wong and CTO Christian Laforte as co-CEOs on an interim basis and is currently searching for a permanent CEO.
Jim O’Shaughnessy, Chairman of the Board, confirmed that he is confident in the ability of Mr. Wong and Mr. LaForte to continue the company’s mission of developing and commercializing leading generative AI products.
Mostak’s decision to step down appears to be driven by a desire to ensure AI technology remains open and decentralized, a vision he feels is critical to the future of AI. “You can’t beat centralized AI by making centralized AI more centralized. As AI becomes increasingly important, we need more transparent and decentralized governance of AI.” he said in a series of posts about X.
The announcement comes amid a tumultuous week for the AI startup, with a number of key developer departures at Stability AI. The company’s challenges have been compounded by the departure of three of Stable Diffusion’s original five researchers. Meanwhile, his rival startup Inflection AI has seen notable staff transfers to Microsoft (NASDAQ:), including co-founder Mustafa Suleiman and key employees.
“As AI grows, so does interest in decentralized AI and the infrastructure that supports it. We welcome more experienced AI founders and leaders to the intersection of Web 3 and AI. “That’s why we’re promoting transparent and open access to AI for everyone. We’re using blockchain technology to advocate for responsible AI.” Ahmad Shadid, founder and CEO of io.net, told Investing.com.
Stable AI’s flagship product, Stable Diffusion, is known for its text-to-image generation capabilities. The company recently introduced a new model, Stable Cascade, available on his GitHub for researchers, and launched paid memberships for commercial use of the model to support further research.
However, Stability AI’s use of data to train Stable Diffusion has led to legal issues, including an upcoming court case with Getty Images in the UK.
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