Musk to open source chatbot Grok

Elon Musk said he will make his chatbot Grok, a competitor to ChatGPT, open source as his feud with OpenAI deepens, AFP reports.

The multi-billionaire unveiled Grok late last year as he tries to catch up with OpenAI, which he helped found in 2015 by providing key early-stage funding.

A few years later, he left OpenAI, and last week filed a shocking lawsuit against the company for violating its original nonprofit mission to make artificial intelligence research accessible to all.

"This week @xAI will open source Grok," Musk said in a post on X, entering one of Silicon Valley's hottest philosophical debates about the future of artificial intelligence.

Technology investors are increasingly splitting into two camps over the development of AI and how the technology should advance.

On the one hand, companies like Meta support an open-source system where researchers and other companies can access the inner workings of the technology to develop new products or innovations.

In December, Meta, IBM and dozens of startups and researchers launched an alliance to advocate for more open and collaborative AI, fearing regulators would close the path to this method.

On the other hand, OpenAI and Google support a higher level of secrecy to protect the technology from bad actors and make money to recoup the high computational costs required to build their industry-leading tools.

Shortly after filing the suit, Musk said in a post that he would drop the lawsuit if OpenAI changed its name to ClosedAI.

Musk is one of the few investors in the world with deep enough pockets to compete with OpenAI, Google or Meta in the artificial intelligence space.

Building an AI model at the same scale as these companies involves huge costs in computing power, infrastructure and expertise. /BGNES