Elon Musk's XAI open sources Grok
Technology
Open sourcing will assist researchers and developers in feedback and testing
(Web Desk) - Elon Musk's company, xAI, has announced the release of its AI chatbot Grok on GitHub, following Musk's statement regarding the move.
Grok, an LLM developed by xAI over a span of four months, is tailored for applications such as coding generation, creative writing, and question answering.
This week, @xAI will open source Grok
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 11, 2024
This open-source release grants researchers and developers the opportunity to enhance the model and influence its future updates. With this move, xAI aims to compete with tech counterparts like OpenAI, Meta, and Google in the AI landscape.
Following Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, now known as X, the company has made the code behind its algorithms publicly available, aligning with Musk's vocal stance on the importance of open-sourcing AI models.
This move comes amidst Musk's ongoing legal dispute with OpenAI, which he co-founded, alleging a breach of the original agreement to keep the AI model open source.
In the realm of AI development, several companies have opted to release open-source or partially open-source models to garner feedback from the research community for further improvements.
While fully open-source foundation models like Mistral and Falcon exist, the majority of widely utilized models remain either closed-source or offer limited open licenses.
For instance, Meta's Llama 2 provides its research for free but imposes fees on customers with a substantial user base and restricts developers from iterating on top of it.
Upon its launch, access to the Grok chatbot necessitated an X subscription, colloquially known as a paid blue check.
Marketed as a more contemporary and edgy alternative to chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini, Grok aimed to stand out with its irreverent approach.
However, early testing revealed Grok to be lacking in humor and distinctive features, failing to compete with the more robust and advanced chatbots available elsewhere.
