Last year, we celebrated exponential growth, bold new programs, and a community that had grown far beyond our wildest expectations. This year? This year tested us. And somehow, despite everything, we're still here, and AI creativity has never been more powerful.
The Year That Tried to Break Us
Let's not dance around it. In January, we got the news: remove NSFW content or lose our payment processor. For a platform built on creative freedom and community-driven innovation, this wasn't just a business challenge, it was an existential threat.
We spent five months fighting for extensions, pitching every payment processor we could find. Even the "high-risk" processors who work with adult content wouldn't touch us. Not because of what we were doing, but because of what an open AI platform could do. Despite our evolving moderation systems, despite removing even SFW real-person likeness content, the answer was always no.
So we adapted. Gift cards through retail partners like Kinguin. A new Wholesale Program. Making it work, even if it's nowhere near what we had before.
But adaptation came with costs. The team got smaller… talented people moved on to bigger and better opportunities, and with the need to reduce spend, we didn't backfill positions. We killed programs we loved: no more live streams, fewer contests, way less presence on social media. We optimized everything we could, cut scope where we had to, and focused on keeping the core platform alive.
Meanwhile, AI Went Supernova
Here's the wild part: while we were fighting to survive, AI creativity exploded into something almost unrecognizable from where we started.
Video generation crossed into the real. When Civitai launched, we were celebrating when AI could generate hands that didn't look like alien appendages. This year? We watched models like WAN produce videos that are indistinguishable from reality. Full scenes, complex movements, videos that would have been impossible even six months ago. And with LoRA support for video, anyone can create their own concepts, characters, and styles. We've gone from "wow, it generated a coherent image" to "wait, that's not real?" in the span of three years.
Image editing went mainstream. It started with Flux Kontext, exploded with Nano Banana, and now open-source models like Qwen Image Edit have eliminated the need for Photoshop for social media content. What used to require professional tools and skills is now accessible to anyone with a prompt.
Avatars and lip-sync hit production quality. Tools that were novelties a year ago—SadTalker, LivePortrait—evolved into systems that can create genuine educational content, social media, even full films. Between closed-source tools like HeyGen and Kling, and open-source options like InfiniteTalk, we're watching a new medium being born in real-time.
What We Built Despite Everything
Even while fighting for survival, we kept building:
Video LoRA training. We brought the same simplicity that made image LoRA training accessible to the video space. Train your own characters, styles, and concepts for video generation. Because if there's one thing we've learned, it's that the community will create tools that corporations couldn’t even imagine.
Creator Program 2.0. We expanded the program from a small alpha to over 35,000 creators. Since March, we've paid out $330,000 to people making models the community actually uses. That's real money going to real creators building real tools.
Generation speed revolution. In February, we moved to a dedicated datacenter and cut average generation time by 70%. Then we kept going! Peer resource sharing, partnership with the SD.cpp community to slash model loading times. The result? Average generation time of 6 seconds, with 4 out of 5 images completing in under a minute even at peak demand.
The Civitai Green Changes. And yes, we need to talk about this one. To support mainstream payment processing and users who don't need the full freedom of Civitai.com, we upgraded Civitai Green with the ability to purchase Green Buzz for SFW generation. But that came with a change: Blue Buzz (the free rewards Buzz) is now limited to SFW content only.
I know this hurt some of you. We saw the outcry. But here's what we also saw: generation times improved, abuse of the generation system plummeted, and we created a path forward that doesn't require shutting down.
Is it perfect? No. Is it what anyone wanted? No. Is it what we had to do to keep the lights on while maintaining a path toward mainstream accessibility? Yes.
What Holds When Everything Shakes
Through all of this—the payment processor nightmare, the team changes, the tough policy changes, the infrastructure pivots—one thing never wavered: this community.
And the people who held it together. Special shoutout to Ally, whose profile banner has literally been him sitting in a burning Civitai datacenter all year. As the face of our community communications, he's navigated an endless stream of fires, rapid changes, and community concerns with a level of patience and dedication that kept this ship steady when the waters got rough.
Thousands of creators building tools for millions of users. Innovation happening faster than we can keep up with. People finding workarounds, supporting each other, pushing boundaries even when the platform itself was fighting for survival.
You didn't just stick around. You kept creating, kept sharing, kept building. That's what makes this different from any other platform. This isn't about us. It never has been. It's about what happens when you give creative people powerful tools and get out of the way.
Looking Forward Through the Fog
I won't pretend to know exactly what the next year brings. This year taught us that sometimes you're just trying to survive the storm, not plan the voyage.
But here's what I do know:
AI creativity is still in its infancy. Video generation is exploding. New modalities are emerging. The gap between imagination and creation keeps shrinking.
And Civitai? We're still here. Leaner, harder, more focused on what actually matters. We've proven we can take a hit and keep going. We've proven this community is resilient enough to weather changes that would kill most platforms.
We've got work to do. Systems to rebuild. Trust to maintain. A sustainable business model to continue to refine. But we're doing it with the same thing that got us through the last year: a community that refuses to let corporate gatekeepers decide what AI creativity should look like.
Thank You (Again, Always)
To everyone who bought gift cards when we lost payment processing. To the creators who kept building even when we had to cut programs. To the users who stuck around through policy changes and infrastructure shifts. To the team members who poured their hearts into this platform, including those we had to say goodbye to.
You're the reason we're still here.
Here's to another year of building in the storm. Because if the last three years have taught us anything, it's that the best creativity happens when you refuse to let circumstances define what's possible.