Elon Musk's Chatbot Grok To Go Open-Source—Here's What To Know

 

Billionaire Elon Musk said xAI’s Grok will become open-source this week, rivaling ChatGPT.

Musk, the billionaire owner of xAI, announced on his social media platform X Monday morning his AI company will open-source the chatbot this week, though he did not specify when the company will finalize the plan or which components of the chatbot will be open-sourced.

By making Grok open-source, Musk would effectively allow the public to freely and publicly access the AI bot, which xAI released last year, keeping it restricted to X users who pay a $16 monthly subscription.

Open-source modeling has become a focal point of Musk’s in recent months, after the billionaire sued OpenAI—the company he co-founded and later left—for allegedly backtracking on its founding pledge of creating an open-source model to instead prioritize shareholders.

Musk has also criticized Google’s Gemini AI image generator after a series of images went viral showing historically inaccurate and misleading content regarding race, with some images showing Black Vikings, a female pope and Black founding fathers—Google apologized for the inaccuracy and paused the image feature, saying the company had attempted to avoid “some of the traps” it had observed in previous image generators, which have had a troubling history of racial stereotypes and difficulties distinguishing faces of people of color.

KEY BACKGROUND

Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018 over criticisms that it prioritized profits over safety, has been both a proponent of artificial intelligence and one of its harshest critics, calling for a pause on AI development last year over fears of an “out-of-control race” to create increasingly advanced products. After launching xAI last March, Musk released the company’s first product in November, naming it Grok and making it available to paid subscribers on X, formerly known as Twitter. During its release, Musk claimed the chatbot is “designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak,” warning users to avoid it if they “hate humor.” Musk also said the bot would be able to access real-time data from X, the social media platform Musk purchased for a whopping $44 billion with the stated intention of making it a haven for free speech—a striking claim following concerns over hate speech on the platform as well as a streak of errors by multiple high-profile chatbots.

CONTRA

Musk sued OpenAI and its co-founder, Sam Altman, earlier this month, alleging the Microsoft-backed tech giant had undermined its founding mission of developing an open-source chatbot to “benefit humanity.” In his lawsuit, the billionaire X, Tesla and SpaceX owner claimed OpenAI had instead aimed to maximize profits and restrict access to the technology by keeping it closed-source, or restricted to the public. While some versions of ChatGPT are free to use, others, including its GPT-4 with an image generation feature, require a subscription.

TANGENT

Altman rejoined OpenAI’s board of directors last week, just four months after the 38-year-old co-founder was ousted by the same board he rejoined. Altman’s ouster last November sent shockwaves through the tech industry, with the company reasoning at the time that Altman was not always “candid” with the board, a decision that prompted the vast majority of OpenAI’s roughly 750 employees to threaten to resign if Altman was not reinstated. OpenAI reached a deal with Altman less than a week after his removal to re-hire him as CEO.

FORBES VALUATION

We estimate Musk’s net worth stands at roughly $197.1 billion, making him the world’s second-richest person, only behind LVMH magnate Bernard Arnault ($233.9 billion). Musk had briefly been overtaken twice this month as the world’s No. 2 by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos amid Tesla’s declining shares price, though Bezos’ estimated net worth has since slid to a still comfortable $190.9 billion.