Stability AI Review — Open-Source Pioneer, Founder Implosion, and the Fight to Stay Relevant

Stability AI launched Stable Diffusion in August 2022 and triggered a seismic shift in AI image generation — open-source, consumer-hardware-compatible, and free to download. Three years later, the company has survived a founder crisis, near-bankruptcy, co-founder fraud lawsuits, copyright battles, and a mass exodus of its best researchers to a rival worth more than Stability ever was. This review covers the full arc: what Stable Diffusion actually was, what went wrong, what Sean Parker and James Cameron are doing running an AI company, and whether Stability AI still matters.