Elon Musk, founder of X (formerly Twitter) and Tesla, has recently decided to make his AI chatbot open source. The chatbot designated Grok, was developed by Musk’s startup AI company xAI.
In a post made on X, Musk states that “This week, @xAI will open-source Grok”. The company announced the release of Grok in November 2023. It was set up as a direct competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, another AI chatbot that has taken the world by storm.
The decision to open-source Grok comes amid an ongoing lawsuit between Elon Musk and OpenAI. Musk, one of the founders of OpenAI, took issue with the direction the company was taking after a recent partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft. Musk has accused OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, of abandoning its core mission statements for the pursuit of profit.
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“OpenAI Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source, de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft. Under its new board, it is not just developing but is refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity,” the lawsuit claims.
Musk has also been very vocal about the potential risk posed by AI. So, the decision to make Grok open source is in line with Musk and his company’s approach to building safe and responsible AI.