Elon Musk announced that xAI is turning its AI chatbot Grok into open source as a counter to OpenAI’s proprietary ChatGPT model.
Elon Musk revealed that xAI is set to open source its AI model, Grok, amid escalating legal actions against competing AI chatbot developer OpenAI.
In a March 11 X post, Musk said Grok will be open source from this week.
Musk didn’t provide detailed information on how he intends to make Grok open source, but the reaction to his announcement was largely favorable. Many users commended his decision. One commenter suggested, “OpenAI should do the same. If they are ‘open’ that is,” prompting Musk to respond, “OpenAI is a lie.”
On February 29, Elon Musk initiated a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the organization violated its founding agreement, which was established when OpenAI was a nonprofit. He contends that OpenAI’s collaboration with Microsoft contradicts the original mission to develop open-source artificial general intelligence (AGI) for humanity’s advantage.
By the end of 2023, Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI had reportedly reached nearly $3 billion.
In his legal action, Musk calls for OpenAI to revert to its foundational open-source ethos and seeks a court order to prevent the commercial utilization of AGI technology. Nonetheless, shortly after the lawsuit was filed, OpenAI’s leadership shared emails that suggested Musk had previously consented to the company’s shift to a for-profit model.
Following the lawsuit’s filing, OpenAI welcomed back Sam Altman to its board after a brief period in November 2023 when he was dismissed and then quickly rehired. The board later acknowledged they had underestimated the impact his departure would have on the organization’s stability.
Musk’s move to make Grok open source is in line with his lawsuit’s plea for OpenAI to promote open-source AGI for “humanity’s benefit.” Grok, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is an AI chatbot developed by Musk’s company, xAI. A distinguishing feature of Grok is its ability to tap into real-time data through the X social media platform and address more sensitive topics that other AI models might avoid.
Users need a verified X account to interact with Grok. In some evaluations, Grok AI, powered by the Grok-1 large language model, has been rated superior to ChatGPT-3.5 but not quite on par with OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4.
