Elon Musk says his AI startup xAI will open-source its Grok chatbot

(Reuters) - Elon Musk said on Monday his artificial intelligence firm xAI will open-source "Grok", a chatbot rivaling OpenAI’s ChatGPT, this week.

 

The development comes about two months after the Tesla  CEO said he felt uncomfortable growing the carmaker into a leader in AI and robotics unless he had at least 25% voting control of the company.

 

Earlier this month, Musk sued ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, saying they had abandoned the startup’s original mission to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity and not for profit.

 

In a podcast episode with computer scientist and podcaster Lex Fridman, Musk suggested in November that he liked the concept of open-source AI. The billionaire’s startup launched the AI model to a small group of users that month. 

 

In December, xAI rolled out its ChatGPT competitor Grok for Premium+ subscribers of social media platform X, aiming to create what Musk has said would be a "maximum truth-seeking AI".

 

(Reporting by Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonia Cheema and Pooja Desai)