Elon Musk announced on Monday that his AI startup, xAI, plans to make its ChatGPT competitor "Grok" available as open-source later this week. This news comes shortly after Musk initiated legal action against OpenAI, accusing the organization of deviating from its not-for-profit mission towards a profit-driven model.
Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and departed in 2018, has consistently voiced concerns over tech giants like Google exploiting technology for financial gain. His lawsuit against the Microsoft-supported OpenAI led to the latter revealing emails indicating Musk's previous support for a for-profit structure and a proposed merger with Tesla to transform the entity into a "cash cow."
Musk shared the announcement of Grok going open-source on X, the social media platform he owns, stating, "This week, @xAI will open source Grok."
This move positions xAI alongside companies like Meta and Mistral in France, which have also released open-source AI models. Similarly, Google has offered its AI model, Gemma, to external developers.
The debate on the merits of open-sourcing AI has intensified among tech investors like Vinod Khosla of OpenAI and Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz since Musk's lawsuit.
Despite the potential for accelerating innovation, some experts have voiced their concerns that open-source AI could be exploited for malicious purposes, including terrorism and the development of uncontrollable super-intelligence.
At last year's AI Safety Summit in Britain, Musk expressed the need for a "third-party referee" to monitor AI development and raise alerts over potential risks. xAI, launched by Musk last year as an alternative to OpenAI and Google, aims to develop a "maximum truth-seeking AI."
In December, xAI introduced Grok to Premium+ subscribers of X.
In a podcast episode with computer scientist Lex Fridman last November, Musk suggested that he favored the concept of open-source AI.
"The name, the open in open AI, is supposed to mean open source, and it was created as a nonprofit open source. And now it is a closed source for maximum profit," Musk stated.
