Recently, Runway stealthily removed its code repository from the Hugging Face platform, including the highly-anticipated Stable Diffusion v1.5 project, causing a significant stir in the tech community.
Runway's actions not only left no trace but also did not notify Hugging Face or any community members. Even more shocking is that the GitHub page has become completely empty. This sudden turn of events has undoubtedly caused inconvenience to developers and researchers who rely on these resources.
https://huggingface.co/runwayml
Runway was once a participant in Stable Diffusion research and held a significant position in related papers. They confidently open-sourced the Stable Diffusion 1.5 version on HuggingFace. However, this action sparked controversy due to copyright issues, ultimately leading to the version being taken down.
https://huggingface.co/runwayml/stable-diffusion-v1-5
In response to the copyright controversy, Runway's CEO/co-founder publicly stated that releasing the Stable Diffusion 1.5 version was a legitimate action. He emphasized that the research authors included members from Runway ML and the University of Munich, and the related research and code had been open-sourced last year.
https://github.com/runwayml/stable-diffusion
Beyond open-source projects, Runway has also launched its own products, such as the Gen-3Alpha video solution, marking further exploration in the field of video technology by the company.
Regarding Runway's sudden deletion, there are various speculations. Some believe it may be related to previous copyright issues, while others speculate that it could be due to market competition pressures, such as the rise of Cog-5B, posing a challenge to Runway.