It Takes a Village to Raise a Dataset

Spawning announced Public Domain 12M (PD12M), an image-text dataset of 12.4 million image-caption pairs, and describes a community-driven governance model for keeping it maintained. Community members can audit the dataset on Source.Plus by flagging problematic images, which are automatically removed from view and reviewed internally, and the team says it can swap in replacement images without disrupting the dataset's statistical characteristics. Users can also upload CC0 works to public collections to help fill gaps created by auditing. Spawning's CEO, Jordan Meyer, and CTO, Nick Padgett, are working on the forthcoming Public Diffusion model, trained entirely on public domain and CC0 materials, and contributions were requested before December 1, 2024.