Is it possible to collect actual observations to confirm or deny the results of this modeling? A key part of any well formed scientific hypothesis is that it can be validated or disproved by real world experimentation or observation (falsifiable). Where will that data come from in this case? Computer models are an important part of science, but if they can't be validated against data, what's the point?
(I'm a dev on the project.) We have another background-removal service, ClippingMagic.com, that is built around an editor to let you fix the errors in the automatic result. You may want to give it a try for your mineral photos.
(I'm a dev.) Not everyone has macOS, and running a DL model in your browser is not exactly mainstream. Which is why segment leader remove.bg gets an estimated 35M in monthly organic traffic. Also, we believe our results are significantly better than those offered by the open-source models we've seen.
(I'm a dev on the project.) It is free while in beta. We've not implemented pricing yet, as we are a small team and just shipped the latest version of the model.
(I'm a dev on the project.) We have no plans to jack up prices. We see the whole market moving to low-margin cost+ pricing and we want to lead rather than follow. If we raised prices later, we'd only expose ourselves to being disrupted in the way that we are hoping to disrupt right now. Low margin plays are all about operational efficiencies, so that we can turn a profit at price points that other providers cannot. That is our laser focus, which is why our processing time is so quick.
Clipping Magic is a totally different product. It is editor-based with a bunch of post-clip effects and features. The editor allows you to fix errors in a way that a single-shot DL-based solution simply does not. We don't actually see the services as competing with each other, since DL-based solutions have taken over the portion of the market where 80-95% success rate and some errors are ok, so long as it is fast and cheap.
(I'm a dev on the project.) The privacy policy is an old and generic one that we use across a bunch of sites. It should be updated. Our retention policy on this site is as stated on the front page FAQ. After five days, the records are deleted.
(I'm a dev on the project.) We've not decided on the exact term of the credits, but they will be long-lasting, so you can pay $5 for 250 images and use that over the course of a few years. We'd make them non-expiring, but that creates an unbounded liability.
In the third paragraph, the author writes that COVID was probably "cooked up in the kitchen of nature", and links to an article to support that assertion. But the linked-to article does not make that point. In the comments section of the article, a commenter pointed this out, and the author replied to that specific comment with an answer that did not address the issue but expressed the author's personal opinion on the matter, and has not updated the article to be more clear.
I'm the other main developer on this project. We see this as part of a broader trend where the margins are going to shrink dramatically for those selling AI tools online. Rather than fight that and come in with prices only a bit below our main competitors, we have decided to just jump straight to the eventual end state and price our services as cost-plus.
This means we are dramatically cheaper than our competitors. It is not even close. But we have solid quality and great dev ops.
The broad development is excellent news for consumers of this technology, and is the inevitable future anyway.