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lumenwrites · 3 years ago
Great project!

I have a question - how can you afford to run this? I looked at the server costs on google compute and runpod.io, and the ones with GPUs powerful enough to run SD are pretty expensive. I'm guessing you don't have a lot of paying users at the beginning, so I don't think you have enough revenue to cover the costs (at least when you're just getting started).

Do you just spend a lot of money to fund this, and hope that once you have enough users it will pay for itself? Or did you find some affordable way to run a server? If yes, and if it's not a secret - where are you renting the server, what are its specs, and how much does it cost?

synapticpaint · 3 years ago
On AWS, a g5 instance costs $1/hr. I can generate roughly 10 images per minute (should be able to get this down with some optimization), so 600 images per hour, so the cost per image is 1/6 of a cent, before adding overhead (idle time, start up/shut down).

Source: I run a similar project: https://synapticpaint.com/

I also offer dreambooth model training for around $2-$4 / model as well as inference on custom dreambooth models. Inference on custom models is where things get a little tricky because if users are using different models and you're loading up new models all the time just to generate 6 images, then that quickly becomes the majority of the work load, drastically pushing up the inference cost. I haven't solved this problem yet. If you have any great ideas, feel free to email me (email in profile)!

jkbl · 3 years ago
At the beginning it was just burning money, but it stars to turn into profit.

The only secret to making it affordable is to autoscale based on a current image generation traffic. It runs on a mix of Tesla V100 and RTX 3090 from runpod.io vast.ai and Lambda Labs.

I actually went through a couple of iterations with it, starting as completely free service, then offering one time payments for image credits and now settled on subscriptions as I see there is a demand for the product. Especially AI Editor[1] which I think offers a unique value to the users.

[1] https://getimg.ai/editor

lumenwrites · 3 years ago
That's amazing, thank you for sharing!

If not a secret, how are you marketing it?

nacs · 3 years ago
Stable diffusion only needs 4GB of VRAM to run on the low end so you can rent low-end consumer GPUs (nvidia RTX for example) for around $0.10 an hour to do the renders.
jkbl · 3 years ago
Yeah, but that's only true when you use one model for yourself. More VRAM is needed for running such a service. It currently loads 6 models per single GPU. And I think I have some VRAM left to add even more.
UncleEntity · 3 years ago
I was running it for free on google colab here and there with no problems.

Haven’t tried the 2.0 out yet so not sure how that’s going.

raymond_goo · 3 years ago
https://vast.ai/ (not affiliated)
permanent · 3 years ago
I'd love to know this as well.
tuhins · 3 years ago
cool, great to see more and more of these coming up!

you can also check out our demo for Stable Diffusion v2. it's free to use, with no email sign-in required and no credit system.

https://app.baseten.co/apps/VBlnMVP/operator_views/nBrd8zP

mechanical_bear · 3 years ago
Verify email? No thanks.
russellbeattie · 3 years ago
Exactly. Put that bullshit up front before I waste time entering a prompt so I know not to bother.
Hoefner · 3 years ago
I can’t even register with my own email domain because of “We do not support disposable email addresses!” error
jkbl · 3 years ago
It's a measure to prevent multi accounts. Some people really overuse free offering. Either your domain/IP is on a spam list or your email server may be misconfigured.
NVQXE23I · 3 years ago
How is this a measure? I have my own domain, so why would I make several accounts for your service? I just need one.

And labeling a domain as disposable, when it's clearly isn't, sounds a bit strange to me.

isuleman · 3 years ago
Well you can also block domains from fakemail.net to prevent disposable emails.
IceHegel · 3 years ago
Wow v2 seems worse than v1.5.
kyleyeats · 3 years ago
They took out a bunch of artist references, and a bunch of celebrities. The two things that made SD stand out. It's no longer the fun one.
frobolo · 3 years ago
Agreed. I like making abstract stuff, much more fun to be had with v1.5.
thundergolfer · 3 years ago
If you prefer interacting with v2 via code, Erik Bernhardsson got v2 running on https://modal.com in 20 minutes, and it'd take 5 minutes to copy and run his Github gist: https://twitter.com/bernhardsson/status/1595960120021696512.

---

To OP, I reckon you should allow 1 generation before hitting us with the login prompt. May lift conversion.

LegitShady · 3 years ago
Personally, having played around with both for only an hour with identical prompts, v1.5 seems to get better results.
joe_the_user · 3 years ago
It seems like v2 is more photorealistic but it more often fails to follow any complex prompt.
NVQXE23I · 3 years ago
Came here to point out that my personal email is wrongfully listed as a disposable email address. It must be that it's a three letter url with a .nl TLD.

Maybe take a look at your mail checking API?