Mochi

AI Engineering for Art - with comfyanonymous

Jan 4, 2025 · 52:09

Comfy Anonymous, the anonymous creator of ComfyUI, details in his first-ever podcast interview how his node-based image generation tool overtook Automatic1111 through superior memory management and early support for SDXL, becoming the de facto interface for advanced diffusion workflows. He started coding on January 1, 2023, and released the first version on January 16, driven by a desire to chain models and experiment with custom samplers. His work at Stability AI from June 2023 ensured ComfyUI efficiently handled SDXL, which leaked via early access and forced users from less powerful GPUs to adopt his tool. He discusses model preferences: Flux for consistency, SD 3.5 for creativity, and SD1.5 remaining popular. For video, he highlights Mochi as a 'true' video model with 3D latents, already implemented in Comfy. Now with a core team, ComfyUI is targeting a v1 release with an easy installer on Windows and Mac, while planning monetization through cloud and enterprise features—but keeping the open-source core free.

Why Compound AI + Open Source will beat Closed AI — with Lin Qiao, CEO of Fireworks AI

Nov 25, 2024 · 55:49

Lin Qiao, CEO of Fireworks AI, argues that compound AI systems combining multiple open-source models will outperform closed monolithic models like OpenAI's. She explains Fireworks' evolution from a PyTorch platform to a full-stack inference and customization engine serving 40+ customers including Cursor. Qiao details their distributed inference engine, Fire Optimizer for quality-latency-cost tradeoffs, and upcoming o1-like model built on open-source foundations. She defends their quantization approach after public criticism from rivals, emphasizes specialization over general intelligence, and invites developers to test their free LoRA adapter hosting.