Black Forest Labs Announces Its Launch and the FLUX.1 Model Series
August 1, 2024 – Black Forest Labs, a new entity in the field of generative AI research, based in the Black Forest of Germany, announced today its creation with the goal of advancing deep learning generative models for media such as images and videos. The company's mission is to push the boundaries of creativity and efficiency, making these models accessible to a broad audience to foster innovation and build trust in AI safety.
Team and Funding:
The Black Forest Labs team is composed of prominent AI researchers and engineers, with experience in creating foundational models such as VQGAN and Stable Diffusion. The company has closed a seed funding round of $31 million, led by Andreessen Horowitz, with additional investments from General Catalyst and MätchVC, among others.
FLUX Launch:
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FLUX.1 Pro: A high-performance model for image generation, available through API and platforms like Replicate and fal.ai.
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FLUX.1 Dev: An open-weight model for non-commercial applications, offering quality similar to FLUX.1 (Pro) but more efficient.
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FLUX.1 Schnell: The fastest model, ideal for local development and personal use, available under the Apache 2.0 license.
Innovations and Technology:
FLUX.1 uses a hybrid architecture that combines multimodal and parallel diffusion blocks, enhancing efficiency and performance with 12 billion parameters. The models set a new standard in image synthesis, outperforming competitors like Midjourney v6.0 and DALL·E 3 in visual quality and adherence to instructions.
Future of Black Forest Labs:
The company plans to expand into text-to-video models, promising unprecedented high definition and speed. Black Forest Labs aims not only to be a leader in generative AI technology but also to educate the public and build trust in these systems, marking a significant step forward in advanced AI technology.
https://github.com/black-forest-labs/flux
Some Flux models can be tested on Hugging Face.
https://huggingface.co/black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev
https://huggingface.co/spaces/black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-schnell
