Yet I doubt an api is enough, what makes SD move so fast and create new innovative ways to use it is that the model can be tinkered with by anyone because it's all open source. I feel any comparable neural network, even if it performs slightly better, won't be able to compete with SD currently. Maybe when progress slows down and other models can put all the different things SD does in an api, then that model will be able to compete by just performing better, but not right now.