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New AI image generator is 8 times faster than OpenAI's best tool — and can run on cheap computers.

Scientists used "knowledge distillation" to condense Stable Diffusion XL into a much leaner, more efficient AI image generation model that can run on low-cost hardware.

South Korean scientists have used a special technique called knowledge distillation to compress the size of an open source (or publicly available) image generation model known as Stable Diffusion XL — which has 2.56 billion parameters, or variables the AI uses to learn during training. The smallest version of the new model, known as "KOALA", has just 700 million parameters, meaning it's lean enough to run quickly and without needing expensive and energy-intensive hardware. When they tested KOALA, it generated an image based on the prompt "a picture of an astronaut reading a book under the moon on Mars" in 1.6 seconds.

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