After suing OpenAI this month, alleging the company has become too closed, Elon Musk says he’ll launch his “truth-seeking” reply to ChatGPT, the chatbot Grok, for anybody to obtain and use.

“This week, @xAI will open source Grok,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X at the moment. That suggests his AI company, xAI, will launch the complete code of Grok and permit anybody to make use of or alter it. By distinction, OpenAI makes a model of ChatGPT and the language mannequin behind it out there to make use of free of charge however retains its code personal.

Musk had beforehand stated little concerning the enterprise mannequin for Grok or xAI, and the chatbot was made out there solely to Premium subscribers to X. Having accused his OpenAI cofounders of reneging on a promise to offer away the corporate’s synthetic intelligence earlier this month, Musk might have felt he needed to open supply his personal chatbot to point out that he’s dedicated to that imaginative and prescient.

OpenAI responded to Musk’s lawsuit final week by releasing email messages between Musk and others wherein he appeared to again the concept of constructing the corporate’s expertise extra closed because it grew to become extra highly effective. Musk in the end plowed greater than $40 million into OpenAI earlier than parting methods with the mission in 2018.

When Musk first introduced Grok was in improvement, he promised that it could be much less politically biased than ChatGPT or different AI fashions, which he and others with right-leaning views have criticized for being too liberal. Tests by WIRED and others rapidly confirmed that though Grok can adopt a provocative style, it is not hugely biased one way or another—maybe revealing the problem of aligning AI fashions constantly with a selected viewpoint.

Open sourcing Grok might assist Musk drum up curiosity in his firm’s AI. Limiting Grok entry to solely paid subscribers of X, one of many smaller world social platforms, implies that it doesn’t but have the traction of OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. Releasing Grok might draw builders to make use of and construct upon the mannequin, and will in the end assist it attain extra finish customers. That might present xAI with knowledge it will probably use to enhance its expertise.

Musk’s transfer to liberate Grok sees him align with Meta’s method to generative AI. Meta’s open supply fashions, like Llama 2, have turn out to be common amongst builders as a result of they are often totally custom-made and tailored to totally different makes use of. But adopting the same technique might draw Musk additional right into a rising debate over the advantages and dangers of giving anybody entry to probably the most highly effective AI fashions.

Many AI specialists argue that open sourcing AI fashions has important advantages akin to rising transparency and broadening entry. “Open models are safer and more robust, and it’s great to see more options from leading companies in the space,” says Emad Mostaque, founding father of Stability AI, an organization that builds numerous open supply AI fashions.