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Why Elon Musk's AI company 'open-sourcing' Grok matters — and why it doesn't

TechCrunch · 8m

Elon Musk's xAI has released its Grok language model as "open source." This move aims to distinguish xAI from its rival OpenAI, and while it contributes to the AI development community to some extent, there are limitations. Grok is a chatbot trained by xAI with a sassy tone and Twitter data access. It competes with medium-sized models like GPT-3.5 but opinions differ on its impressiveness. The challenge lies in defining "open" in the context of AI models, as their creation process is complex and unknowable. Releasing weights is the closest to open source, but it doesn't include crucial data like training dataset and process. Grok's release provides value but has limitations due to its size and resource requirements. Questions arise regarding xAI's dedication to open source development and the motivation behind this move.