Elon Musk announced that xAI, his artificial intelligence startup, will release Grok, a chatbot competing with ChatGPT, as open source later this week. This follows Musk’s recent legal action against OpenAI and his criticism of the Microsoft-backed startup for straying from its initial commitment to open source principles.
Last year, xAI introduced Grok, equipped with features such as access to “real-time” information and perspectives unrestricted by “politically correct” norms. The service is accessible to subscribers of X’s $16 monthly subscription.
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Elaborating on which aspects of Grok he intends to open source, Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI alongside Sam Altman almost a decade ago, established the organization as a counterbalance to Google’s AI dominance. However, Musk claimed in a lawsuit filed last month that OpenAI, obligated to make its technology “freely available” to the public, has become closed-source and shifted its focus to maximize profits for Microsoft.
Making it open source could provide the public with free access to explore the code underlying the technology, bringing xAI in line with companies like Meta and France’s Mistral, both of which have open-source AI models. Google has also unveiled an AI model named Gemma, offering external developers the opportunity to customize it according to their requirements.
Stable Diffusion (SD) stands as a compelling example of how open source can rapidly advance technology. The SD ecosystem, which includes various SD and SDXL model variants developed by the community, along with ComfyUI featuring Custom Nodes, Fooocus, and other elements, has demonstrated remarkable superiority in AI image generation when compared to competitors like Dall-E, Google Gemini, Midjourney, and others.
On the other hand, although open-sourcing technology has the potential to accelerate innovations, certain experts caution that open-source AI models might be exploited by terrorists for creating chemical weapons or even for the development of a conscious super-intelligence beyond human control.