How the machines work

Member lesson

What these models cost to run

Lesson 13 of 13 in How the machines work.

Lesson

Generation feels free because the first month is cheap, and then a studio runs a campaign and discovers that a hundred usable frames took eleven hundred attempts. The cost of a delivered image is the cost of every image you threw away to get it, plus the upscale, plus the retouching time.

400 generated60 shortlisted12 finished4 deliveredyou pay for all four hundredprice the four
A funnel from four hundred generations down to four delivered images.
One small framed print stands on an easel. Behind it, a huge heap of crumpled rejected prints nearly reaches the ceiling, and a person with a wheelbarrow tips another load onto the pile.
One print delivered, a mountain thrown away. Price the whole heap, not the frame.
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  1. Question 1, locked

    Which of these words means this? “What one generation costs you at the API. Ranges from fractions of a penny to well over a dollar.”

    • Per-image cost
    • Multimodal
    • Latent
    • Scheduler
  2. Question 2, locked

    Which of these words means this? “What text costs, priced separately for what goes in and what comes out.”

    • System prompt
    • Reverse process
    • Token cost
    • Guidance scale
  3. Question 3, locked

    Which of these words means this? “What one delivered piece of work costs once you count the rejects. The only number that matters.”

    • Unit economics
    • Steps
    • Model
    • Pre-training
End of How the machines workMembers onlyNow play it5 games from this module at four levels, and a stamp for your ticket book.

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