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Comment by anshul | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know if or when google intends to make this available for beta testing or public use?

They're probably afraid that people will generate images that don't conform to the current American Progressive Vision.

Towards the bottom of the page they say: “The potential risks of misuse raise concerns regarding responsible open-sourcing of code and demos. At this time we have decided not to release code or a public demo. In future work we will explore a framework for responsible externalization that balances the value of external auditing with the risks of unrestricted open-access.”

Are they afraid of lawsuits or are they painfully regressive, prude moralists?

Stable diffusion was un-neutered within 24 hours of its public release and the worst people do with it is Emma Watson porn.

It's not about prudishness, although generating pornography is one of the concerns. In the paper there's a full page on ethical concerns, but some of issues they mention are misinformation, and perpetuating harmful cultural stereotypes around race and/or gender roles.

Or they just remember Microsoft Tay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot)

In a nutshell they're afraid of people using prompts generating black people looking like monkeys/gorillas. And other such sensitive examples that others have posted/mentioned.

While I understand that view, pandora’s box is already open, by their own measurements other publicly-available technology is comparable: so the only thing they’re stopping with this is direct comparison of their tech to others.

A more cynical side of me just thinks Google is rushing out the PR (including the hand-plucked sample images) because they can see that the state of the tech is progressing rapidly and perhaps by the time their tech is release-ready a competitor will already have something better (the new round of betas certainly look promising.)

It is a little bit on brand for Google to make an announcement they have the best, only for those claims to fall over later.

By the time they figure out the "responsible externalization" portion, competitors (including open source) will surpass their results.

The technology isn't special to Google. They don't control its proliferation.

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