(Corrects second paragraph to say the lawsuit was filed earlier this month, not last week)
(Reuters) – Elon Musk said on Monday that his artificial intelligence startup xAI will open source ChatGPT challenger Grok this week, days after suing OpenAI for abandoning its original mission in favor of a commercial model. announced that it would become
The billionaire has warned several times against big tech companies like Google's use of technology for commercial purposes. Earlier this month, he filed a lawsuit against Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015 but left after three years.
“This week, @xAI will open source Grok,” Musk said in a post on his social media company X.
The move would allow the public to freely experiment with the code behind the technology, and could see xAI work with companies like Meta and France's Mistral, which have open-source AI models.
Google has also released an AI model called Gemma that external developers may be able to create based on their needs.
Technology investors, including OpenAI backer Vinod Khosla and Marc Andreessen, co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, have been pushing for open source AI since Musk filed a lawsuit against the ChatGPT maker. We have been discussing about transformation.
While open source technology can help accelerate innovation, some experts believe open source AI models could be used by terrorists to manufacture chemical weapons or even create conscious superintelligence beyond human control. It warns that it may be used for development.
At the UK's AI Safety Summit last year, Musk said he wanted to create an “third-party umpire” who could oversee companies developing AI and sound the alarm if there were concerns.
Seeking an alternative to OpenAI and Google, Musk launched xAI last year, saying it would create “the most truth-seeking AI.” In December, the startup rolled out Grok to X Premium+ subscribers.
In a podcast episode with computer scientist and podcaster Rex Fridman in November, Musk suggested he supported the concept of open source AI.
“The name open in Open AI is supposed to mean open source, and it was created as non-commercial open source. And now it's closed source for maximum benefit,” Musk said.
(Reporting by Gursimran Kaur and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonia Cheema and Pooja Desai)