Elon Musk declared on Monday that Grok, a rival to ChatGPT, would be made available to the public by his artificial intelligence business, xAI, within the next week. This announcement was made not long after he accused OpenAI of abandoning its initial non-profit goal in favor of a profit-driven business plan and filed a lawsuit against the company.
Musk also announced that xAI will open-source Grok this week on his social media network, X. This action might put xAI in line with other businesses like Meta and Mistral, a French company, that have made their AI models publicly available for experimentation. Google has made Gemma, an AI model, available for external developers to customize to their specifications.
Musk has regularly voiced worries about the way large tech corporations, like Google, leverage technology for profit. Earlier this month, he filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the business he co-founded in 2015 and quit after three years. OpenAI responded with emails showing Musk had backed the notion of becoming a for-profit company and suggested merging with Tesla to turn the merged company into a “cash cow.”
Tech capitalists, such as Vinod Khosla, who supports OpenAI, and Marc Andreessen, who co-founded Andreessen Horowitz, have been debating open-sourcing in AI. This discussion has intensified after Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. Though some scientists warn that terrorists could use open-source AI models to create chemical weapons or create a superintelligence that is uncontrollable, open-sourcing can speed up progress.
Musk stated his intention to create a “third-party referee” to supervise AI development companies and sound the alarm when needed at the AI Safety Summit held in Britain last year. Musk established xAI with the goal of creating a “maximum truth-seeking AI” in opposition to OpenAI and Google. X Premium+ users were first exposed to Grok by xAI in December.
