Elon Musk's AI startup xAI will open source Grok, a chatbot that competes with ChatGPT, the entrepreneur said this week, days after filing a lawsuit against OpenAI and complaining that the Microsoft-backed startup had deviated from… Its roots are open source.
xAI launched Grok last year, packing it with features including access to “real-time” information and opinions that counter the “politically correct” approach. The service is available to customers who pay for the $16 monthly X subscription.
Musk helped found OpenAI with Sam Altman nearly a decade ago as a counterweight to Google's dominance in AI. But OpenAI, which was also required to make its technology “freely available” to the public, became closed source and shifted focus to maximizing Microsoft's profits, Musk alleged in the lawsuit filed late last month. (Read OpenAI's response here.)
“To this day, OpenAI’s website continues to advertise that its charter aims to ensure that AGI ‘benefits all of humanity.’ However, in reality, OpenAI has been transformed into a de facto closed-source subsidiary of the world’s largest technology company: Microsoft, Musk's lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit has sparked debate among many technologists and investors about the merits of open source AI. Vinod Khosla, whose company is an early backer of OpenAI, called Musk's legal action a “massive distraction from the goals and benefits of AGI.”
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, accuses Khosla of “pushing to ban open source research” in AI. “Every significant new technology that advances human well-being is greeted with moral panic,” said Andreessen, whose company a16z has backed Mistral, whose chatbot is open source. “This is just the latest.”
The promise of Grok being released open source means xAI will join a growing list of companies, including Meta and French startup Mistral, that have taken their chatbot codes public.
Musk has long been a proponent of open source. Tesla, another company he leads, has open-sourced many of its patents. “Tesla will not file patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology,” Musk said in 2014. Company X, formerly known as Twitter, also open sourced some of its algorithms last year.
