According to Elon Musk, xAI will open source its Grok chatbot. The founder of the company, whose AI assistant is available to Premium+ subscribers on X, hasn’t revealed any other details about the decision, which is slated to take effect this week.
It’s hardly the first time a Musk company has opened up access to its knowhow. Tesla open sourced its patents a decade ago, and now practically every major car manufacturer has adopted its electric vehicle charging connector. X, meanwhile, published the code that powers its “For You” algorithmic feed last year, though we didn’t learn much from it.
As The Wall Street Journal points out, Musk may be hoping that, by letting third-party developers and researchers dig into Grok’s code, there could could be an increased uptake of the model. The developer community may also provide feedback that could be used to improve Grok.
Open sourcing Grok may also be seen as a dig at OpenAI. Earlier this month, Musk sued the ChatGPT maker, a company he co-founded, for allegedly prioritizing profits and ditching its original not-for-profit mission. The suit described OpenAI as a “closed-source de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion into OpenAI and has a 49 percent stake. OpenAI bit back at Musk by claiming that he wanted to merge the company with Tesla and become its CEO.
