Midjourney Bans Stability AI Employees Over Alleged Data Scraping

Midjourney bans Stability AI employees over alleged data scraping, causing a systems outage. Learn more about the controversy and its implications.

Midjourney Bans Stability AI Employees Over Alleged Data Scraping

Midjourney, a prominent AI company, has recently made headlines by banning all employees from rival company Stability AI over alleged data scraping. The ban comes in response to a systems outage that occurred earlier this month and was attributed to "botnet-like activity" from Stability AI employees. This controversy has raised concerns about data privacy, automation practices, and the ethics of generative AI systems.

The incident unfolded when Midjourney users noticed an extended server outage preventing generated images from appearing in their galleries. Midjourney later revealed that the outage was caused by "someone at Stability AI trying to grab all the prompt and image pairs." Multiple paid accounts linked to an individual on the Stability AI data team were identified as the source of the disruption.

In a summary of a business update call, Midjourney stated that it had taken immediate action by banning all Stability AI employees from using its service indefinitely. Furthermore, Midjourney announced a new policy to prohibit employees of any company engaging in "aggressive automation" or causing service outages from accessing their platform.

Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque responded to the allegations, stating that the company was investigating the situation and denying any involvement in the data scraping attempt. Mostaque emphasized the use of synthetic and provided data, claiming that Stability AI's Stable Diffusion 3 AI model outperformed other models. He suggested that if a Stability AI employee was responsible for the outage, it was unintentional and not a deliberate distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

The fallout from this incident has sparked discussions about the potential implications of scraping large amounts of online data without consent. Both Midjourney and Stability AI have faced criticism for training their AI models on copyrighted works obtained through scraping. They have also been embroiled in copyright lawsuits, with Midjourney being accused of creating an artist database without permission.

It is worth noting the irony of the situation, as both companies have been targeted by artists and creatives who argue that their works have been used without consent. This controversy sheds light on the need for ethical practices and consent-based approaches in the development and use of generative AI systems.

As of now, the situation is still developing, and no further updates have been provided by either Midjourney or Stability AI. The Verge reached out to both companies for comments, but no responses have been received at the time of writing.

In conclusion, the ban imposed by Midjourney on Stability AI employees due to alleged data scraping has raised important questions about privacy, automation, and ethical considerations in the field of generative AI. The incident serves as a reminder of the ongoing challenges associated with data scraping and the need for responsible AI development.

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