The fine-print at the bottom explains it: "On a Tesla T4, it takes on average 0.173 seconds per novel generation."
I don't think you can expect someone to pay for T4 instance 24/7 for some hobby project.
That's a needlessly uncharitable interpretation of what is happening here. The site is giving the misleading impression that these images are generated on the spot, and then walking it back in the fine print.
It's a valid criticism, and lecturing people about the economics is not a charitable engagement with that criticism.
He or she's not lecturing anyone about economics. In fact, if we want to talk about charity, I think that accusation is about the least charitable thing I've seen so far on this thread!
That matters for two reasons, first because words and semantics are important, clear and correct communication is important. Second, the technology required to generate new paintings (cheaply and quickly) on demand is different from the technology required to generate a very large (infinite) number of paintings up front. They’re both interesting but for different reasons, and one shouldn’t be misrepresented as the other.
But since we're here: the gnashing of teeth on this thread about having been "mislead" does seem to me to be a bit out of proportion. This person really does seem to have developed a cool toy that uses AI to generate convincing abstract art, but many here aren't saying about it because they object to some of the wording on the landing page!
It's their own fault, of course, for writing the page the way that they did. But still...
But the hallmark of many internet comment threads is to try and get additional mileage out the conversation by subjecting said reasonable observations to the ritual exercise of switcheroos, contrarianism, idiosyncratic distinctions and unusual interpretations. Which leads to the original wisdom being repeated, which makes it seem like it's being blown out of proportion.
But I think the simpler explanation is just that it's a correct observation and that it's not that complicated.
And the commenter most definitely was criticizing a very strawmanny 'expectation' that they pay 24/7 to serve an image generation app, which is projection of a view that wasn't expressed by anybody and is certainly not the most charitable reading of what people mean when they say the message creates a misleading impression.
For one example, a more reasonable 'expectation' would be that the language be changed to say it's a gallery of images already generated. Which is different from the uncharitable and unreasonable assertion that everyone is expecting them to pay to maintain a server.
It's misleading. I don't care if they clarify somewhere else on the site. The intention is clearly to mislead from the get go.