On Monday, Elon Musk announced that his AI venture, xAI, will be releasing its ChatGPT competitor, “Grok,” as an open-source project this week. This move comes shortly after Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing them of deviating from their initial mission in favor of a profit-driven approach.
Musk, a vocal critic of big tech companies like Google, has consistently cautioned against the exploitation of technology for financial gain.
Earlier this month, Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but departed from the organization three years later, filed a lawsuit against the Microsoft-backed entity.
In retaliation, OpenAI released emails indicating that Musk had endorsed a proposal to establish a for-profit entity and had expressed interest in merging with the electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer to enhance profitability.
Musk made the Grok announcement on X, saying “This week, @xAI will open-source Grok.”
The decision has the potential to offer the general public unrestricted access for experimenting with the underlying code of the technology, thereby positioning xAI in parallel with companies like Meta and France’s Mistral, both renowned for their open-source AI models.
Furthermore, Google’s recent release of an AI model named Gemma presents an opportunity for external developers to potentially tailor it to their specific requirements.
Since Musk initiated the lawsuit against the ChatGPT developer, tech investors such as Vinod Khosla, a supporter of OpenAI, and Marc Andreessen, co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, have engaged in discussions regarding the merits of open-sourcing in AI.
Although open-sourcing technology has the potential to accelerate innovation, certain experts caution that open-source AI models might be exploited by malicious entities, potentially enabling the creation of chemical weapons or the development of a conscious super-intelligence beyond human oversight.
