Li Yizhou's AI class was removed from the entire network, and infringement disputes continued

Interface News Reporter | Zhao Yifan

Interface News Editor | Song Jianan

Li Yizhou, nicknamed the "Godfather of Chinese AI", is caught in the whirlpool of public opinion and cannot extricate himself.

At noon on February 22, a Jiemian News reporter noticed that Li Yizhou's personal video account had been banned from following. At present, in addition to Li Yizhou's books in the Douyin window are still on sale, his AI courses have been removed from the shelves on WeChat video accounts, Xiaohongshu and other platforms.

Not only that, but the WeChat mini-program "Yizhou Yijiao", which sells courses, has also been suspended for violating the Interim Provisions on the Development and Administration of Public Information Services on Instant Messaging Tools.

In response to the above situation, as of press time, Li Yizhou himself has not responded.

Regarding whether the removal of the course will affect users who have purchased, Li Yizhou's artificial intelligence course assistant only gave a link to the mini program in the reply, and did not give a clear text reply.

The interface news reporter tested and found that at present, the artificial intelligence course can still be viewed normally on the applet, the Yizhou intelligent website can also be used normally, and another official video account "Li Yizhou AI" can also be followed normally.

Screenshot of the video account

The interface news reporter asked the course teaching assistant

Previously, Li Yizhou's AI course was questioned by users due to too much advertising content and low course quality, and caused disputes such as "rights protection refund", "teaching assistant disbandment of group chats", and "misappropriation of drawing models". At this time, it has only been two days since Li Yizhou was named "the only Chinese god in the AI circle who can be on an equal footing with Ultraman".

On February 21, Li Yizhou replied to Jiemian News about various controversies, saying, "The corresponding content is being sorted out, and the incident has been misunderstood and exaggerated." But so far, Li Yizhou has not responded further.

In addition to the ban on the account and the removal of the course, this topical figure who has made a name for himself by teaching AI courses also faces a thorny problem - suspected of unauthorized appropriation of drawing models.

The incident has risen to the legal level. Jiemian News has learned that a number of developers and the SD ecological website Liblibai have issued a statement saying that they are demanding that Li Yizhou immediately stop the infringement, negotiate compensation with the company and the original creator in a timely manner, and apologize for the infringement on public media platforms and self-media platforms.

Some developers pointed out that the Stable Diffusion model they published on other websites was misappropriated by Li Yizhou on its "Yizhou Intelligence" website without authorization.

"Yizhou Intelligence" has obviously also noticed the relevant public opinion, and it has added a copyright notice on its official website, and said that "the model is submitted by community users, and the signature is the name of the publisher, not the name of the author, if there is any infringement request, you can contact us." ”

Yizhou Intelligent official website

According to a number of developers, a total of 97 models have been listed on the "Yizhou Intelligence" website, except for 1 model that is the official model of Stable Diffusion XL, the rest are third-party models made by developers. "Yizhou Intelligence" published the model on its own website without communicating with the developer and the website, not only did it not share with the developer, but the model was not signed.

Usually Stable Diffusion only provides a basic model, because it cannot meet the specific style and needs, third-party developers will adjust the parameters accordingly, so as to generate a personal or more practical fine-tuning model, that is, a third-party model.

"Mai Tang", the trainer of the realistic model with the largest number of SD downloads on the whole network, said that he was appropriated by at least 3 models by "Yizhou Intelligence". Although these models are all open and free, they cannot be used commercially without authorization.

"Other platforms will share the revenue generated by the model, and the amount of the share varies from platform to platform, and the average selling price of the model is mostly 20,000 to 80,000 yuan. In addition to the share, some companies will also contact the company to customize the model after seeing their work, Mai said.

The amount of money and time that each developer invests behind the scenes is incalculable. "Generally, it takes a week to a month to fine-tune the model, depending on the difficulty, and even one to two months to fine-tune the large model of architecture and interior design. Developers Zhongzhong and Lao Wang said to the interface news reporter.

According to Zhongzhong, his studio spent 600,000 yuan on equipment and labor costs alone last year, the price of a host equipped with an NVIDIA 4090 graphics card was about 25,000 yuan, and the labor cost of training experts was as high as 2,000 yuan per day. 

Regarding the possible infringement of "Yizhou Intelligence", You Yunting, a senior partner of Shanghai Dabang Law Firm, said, "The unauthorized commercial use by a third party involves breach of contract, and both the user who uploaded the model and the website party can be held liable for breach of contract." If a third-party model is used after misappropriation or cracking of technical measures, the person who provides the user with the stolen interface service is suspected of unfair competition. ”

The developers had contacted the technology provider of Yizhou Intelligence, but the person in charge insisted that they had obtained the official interface for Stable Diffusion. When the developer said that he had never received the share, the person in charge said "I don't know".

Regarding the question of whether there is infringement in the shell, You Yunting said, "It is necessary to look specifically at the user agreement of the calling company, if the other party agrees to the user service and then uses it to a third party, it is legal, otherwise it is a breach of contract or unfair competition." ”

As of press time, Li Yizhou's AI course has been removed from the entire network, but the condemnation of him continues.