@Dioxide Illustrious is a model that's trained on a database of Danbooru and e621 tags to make generating easier. Things like personalmerge have sprouted up that get amazing results without the need of any LoRA's as long as the artist has images on Danbooru/e621, all you need is artist tags, character tags, etc.

LoRA's for Illustrious are really only necessary when an artist has too little data on Danbooru/e621, which causes their tag to output a generic anime style instead of art in their style. That's why some artists like vicsenpai and MysticalPP need a LoRA; they don't have enough images on-site because their quality control prevented the images from being posted. I've seen a lot of people switch over to it in the communities I follow simply because it's easier and faster than Pony.

Frankly, the only issue I have with it is the dataset being used, since Danbooru is notoriously strict with quality control, since images unapproved by moderators get deleted after 3 days. Yet that's exactly why it ended up being perfect for training...

TL;DR: Illustrious is faster than Pony/AutismMix and requires less tagging and LoRAs to get good results, unless a specific artist doesn't have enough data, then a LoRA is required.

@ManOfTheHour12 dude... that was one hell of an elevator pitch! Ya sold ME on it.