Days after he sued OpenAI for forsaking its initial objective in favour of a for-profit model, Elon Musk announced on Monday that his artificial intelligence business, xAI, would open-source its ChatGPT challenger, “Grok,” this week.

The billionaire has issued numerous warnings against large technology corporations like Google using technology for financial benefit.

Earlier this month, he filed the case against Microsoft-backed OpenAI, a company he co-founded in 2015 but quit after three years. In response, emails revealed by OpenAI revealed that the CEO of Tesla was in favour of a plan to establish a for-profit corporation and desired a merger with the EV manufacturer in order to turn the merged business into a “cash cow.”

“This week, @xAI will open source Grok,” Musk said in a post on X, the social media firm he owns.

The action ties xAI with companies like Meta and Mistral of France, both of whom have open-source AI models, and may allow the general public unrestricted access to play with the technology’s source code.

Additionally, Google has made Gemma, an AI model, available for other developers to customise to their specifications.

Since Musk launched the lawsuit against the creator of ChatGPT, tech investors, including OpenAI backer Vinod Khosla and Marc Andreessen, co-founder of venture capital company Andreessen Horowitz, have been arguing about open-sourcing in AI.

Although open-sourcing technology helps expedite innovation, some experts have cautioned that terrorists may exploit open-source AI models to produce chemical weapons or even to create a conscious super-intelligence that is uncontrollable by humans.

Musk stated last year at the AI Safety Summit in Britain that he intended to create a “third-party referee” that would supervise companies working on AI and raise red flags if they felt unsafe.

xAI was introduced by Musk last year in an attempt to develop a “maximum truth-seeking AI” as a rival to OpenAI and GAE. The business launched Grok for X Premium+ users in December.

In a November podcast, Musk hinted that he liked the idea of open-source artificial intelligence (AI) in an interview with podcaster and computer scientist Lex Fridman.

“The name, the open in open AI, is supposed to mean open source, and it was created as a nonprofit open source. And now it is a closed source for maximum profit,” Musk had said.

(Adapted from BusinessInsider.in)

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