Midjourney Bans Stability AI Employees Due to Suspected Botnet Activity
Midjourney, a popular AI image generator service, has recently banned all employees of Stability AI from its platform indefinitely. This decision was made following a 24-hour service outage on March 2, which Midjourney attributed to bot-like activity attempting to scrape prompt and image pairs in bulk. The source of this activity was traced back to a Stability AI data team employee.
In response to the incident, Midjourney has introduced a new policy of banning all employees of a company responsible for aggressive automation or service disruptions. This move has drawn criticism from Siobhan Ball of The Mary Sue, who pointed out that Midjourney has used scraped training data from the Internet without permission.
Users of Midjourney’s service pay a monthly subscription fee to access the AI image generator, which has faced backlash for using artists’ works without permission. Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque has stated that the bot activity was unintentional and that his company does not need data from Midjourney. Mostaque also emphasized that Stability AI only scrapes data from sources with proper permissions and opt-outs.
Despite the recent ban and controversy, Mostaque downplayed the rivalry between Stability AI and Midjourney. He highlighted a key connection in their histories, where he provided a cash grant to fund Midjourney during its beta testing phase.
As the situation unfolds, both companies are working to address the issue and maintain the integrity of their services. Stay tuned for updates on this developing story.
“Travel aficionado. Incurable bacon specialist. Tv evangelist. Wannabe internet enthusiast. Typical creator.”