🎨 Stable Diffusion gets an upgrade

ALSO: Upgrade your phone or get left behind?

Estimated Read Time: 5 minutes

Stability releases the newest model of their open source image generator. AI chip manufacturing heats up with more competition. And with all of the recent moves for AI to enter phones, now’s the time to push consumers to upgrade or become obsolete. Let’s dive in!

• 🎨 Stable Diffusion 3 Medium released.

• 💰 Nvidia has South Korean competition now.

• 🧑‍⚖️ Elon Musk withdraws his lawsuit.

• 📱 Phone makers are making their big move… upgrade or die.

• 🤔 Microsoft removes core features from Copilot Pro.

🎨 Stable Diffusion 3 Medium released

What happened: Stable Diffusion just released their newest model, Medium 3, to the public. Stable Diffusion is a free, open source image generator. You enter a prompt and out comes an image. The defining advantage of Stable Diffusion is the user’s ability to train the model to create any kind of image they want (so it’s popular with third party devs… and porn).

The details: 

• The model claims to have improved quality and photorealism, prompt understanding, and the ability to create text without it looking like an alien language (I’m skeptical though).

• The model uses over 2 billion parameters, but is much smaller and can run on modern GPUs with a low VRAM footprint.

• Stable Diffusion is free and open source, you can check out their newest model for yourself here.

• “The weights are now available under an open non-commercial license and a low-cost Creator License.” You need to contact Stability directly for large scale commercial use.

• Unfortunately, rumors persist that Stability (the company who owns Stable Diffusion) is looking for a buyer.

• Stability was reportedly working on releasing a video generator this year (competitor to Sora)… I think those plans are in the air now.

Why it matters: Open source is the Achilles heel of Big Tech’s grip on AI. The more progress with open source models, the better. This is also the biggest model used by third party image apps. We can only hope Stability finds a way to recover under new leadership.

🧑‍⚖️ Elon Musk withdrew his lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman today. This comes right before a hearing on Wednesday, where a judge would consider if the case should be dismissed entirely. But I think most people take the lawsuit too seriously or don’t understand its purpose. Musk was never going to win the lawsuit. He wanted to create publicity for his own AI company, xAI (which is rumored to have some hefty updates coming), and to shine a light on OpenAI’s nefarious dealing. Which… OpenAI then continued to light up themselves. I think his work is done here.

📱 Google has released Gemini Nano for the Pixel 8 and 8a. This is basically a mini version of the full AI model shrunken down to run locally on phones, similar to the iPhone 15 Pro’s “Apple Intelligence” (announced a few days ago). But there’s a problem I haven’t heard anyone talk about.

AI features are creating an excuse for a new upgrade cycle. Phone sales have slowed significantly in recent years because there’s no real need to upgrade. They're fast enough and can do everything you need already. So phone makers, like Apple, have been caught planning obsolescence, meaning they create the phones with the intent for them to break down in a few years and forcing an upgrade.

This is another chance to push consumers to upgrade their phones. Want the newest AI features that’ll make life a breeze? Pay up and grab the latest phone. Google is doing this with the Pixel just as Apple is forcing anything older than an iPhone 15 Pro to upgrade for AI features (even the plain iPhone 15 isn’t enough).

💰 Nvidia has South Korean competition now

What happened: Two leading South Korean AI chip companies, Rebellions and Sapeon, have announced their merger. This will create serious competition for Nvidia. The merger is set to complete by late this year.

The details:

• The merged company plans to go public in two to three years (that stock money 💰). They claim this is the golden hour for the AI chip market. Duh…

• The companies will focus mostly on advancing Neural Processing Units (NPUs), which are basically a dedicated AI chip separate from the GPU. This is what Microsoft’s new Copilot PCs will use.

• SK Telecom, KT, and SK Hynix remain major stakeholders in the merged company.

• Recent partnerships between the US, UK, Japan, and South Korea have pointed in one clear direction… reducing a reliance on China for AI (and general) chip manufacturing and switching to domestic and friendly countries for chips instead.

Why it matters: Nvidia has some serious competition brewing. Between South Korean Rebellions and Sapeon, and Chinese manufacturers like MetaX and Enflame, we may see eastern chip manufacturers steal serious market share in the future. I agree with their assessment… this is the gold rush for AI chips. If there was one area to invest in, it’s gotta be AI chip manufacturing.

🤔 Microsoft removes features from Copilot Pro

What happened: Microsoft is making Copilot Pro less appealing by removing GPT Builder from their $20 monthly subscription. But only for us mortals. They’ll remain available for enterprise use.

The details: 

• Microsoft is completely removing the ability to create custom GPTs in Copilot, leaving little reason to use Copilot Pro over ChatGPT Plus, which offers building and using other people’s custom GPTs.

• The GPTs will be removed on July 10th. It’s unknown if Microsoft has any plans to offer a different alternative to the feature.

• This includes existing Custom GPTs. They won’t be accessible either.

• Microsoft will continue to offer GPT Builder to commercial and enterprise customers. (Common plebs like us are too broke💰)

• Microsoft tenderly suggests you save your beloved custom instructions before they hit “delete” on your favorite GPT.

• (GPT-4o will soon be used in ChatGPT’s custom GPTs instead of GPT-4.)

Why this matters: This really gives no reason to use Copilot Pro over a ChatGPT paid subscription. Custom GPTs are half of the value. They allow you to complete common, repeatable tasks in a jiffy, and are the common man’s best AI automation tool.

🏡 Let’s vacation with Jason Voorhees

Source: Midjourney

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