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In a move that has taken even his critics by surprise, Elon Musk has announced that his AI startup, xAI, will open-source Grok AI, its chatbot that competes with ChatGPT, later this week. This means that he will be releasing the source code, or at least a significant portion of it, for everyone to see and possibly use in their own chatbots.
This move comes just weeks after Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the Microsoft-backed startup strayed from its original open-source principles and now focuses purely on profit.
Grok was initially released by xAI last year. It offers features such as access to real-time information. The service is available to X’s premium subscribers, who pay a $16 monthly subscription.
Musk was one of the first people to back OpenAI. He invested in Sam Altman’s project almost a decade ago, hoping that OpenAI would continue on its path to take on the monopoly that Google had become.
However, Musk claims that OpenAI has shifted away from its commitment to freely sharing its technology with the public, becoming closed-source, and focusing on maximizing Microsoft’s profits.
The lawsuit has sparked a debate among technologists and investors about the value of open-source AI. Vinod Khosla, an early supporter of OpenAI, criticized Musk’s legal action, labeling it a “massive distraction” from the goal of achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and its benefits.
In response, Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, accused Khosla of advocating against open-source AI research.
Andreessen argued that every significant technological advancement is met with exaggerated concerns and that open-source AI is essential for progress. Andreessen’s firm, a16z, has supported Mistral, an open-source chatbot.
The announcement that xAI will soon open-source Grok adds it to a growing list of companies, including Meta and French startup Mistral, that have made their chatbot codes available to the public. Grok also joins several of Elon Musk’s projects that have been made open-source.
Elon Musk has been a vocal supporter of open-source initiatives. At Tesla, many patents have been made open-source. X also took steps to open-source some of its algorithms last year.
