Elon Musk plans to open-source xAI's Grok chatbot

Elon Musk announced on Monday that his artificial intelligence business, xAI, would open-source its ChatGPT rival, "Grok," this week, according to Reuters. Musk has issued numerous warnings against large technology corporations like Google using technology for financial benefit.

Recently, he filed a case against Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015 but quit after three years. Musk claimed breach of contract at the startup saying that the “founding agreement” with him and co-founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman said that a new AI lab would be a nonprofit for the benefit of humanity and that it would not keep information private for commercial benefit.

In response, emails revealed by OpenAI showed that the X owner was in favour of a plan to establish a for-profit corporation and desired a merger with the EV manufacturer to turn the merged business into a 'cash cow.'

Following this, Musk announced that he plans to open-source Grok.

The action ties xAI with companies like Meta (META.O), and France's Mistral, both of which have open-source AI models, and may allow the general public unrestricted access to play with the technology's source code.

Additionally, Google has made available an AI model named Gemma that third-party developers may customize to their specifications. 

Although open-sourcing technology helps expedite innovation, there have been concerns that terrorists may exploit open-source AI models to produce chemical weapons or even to create a conscious super-intelligence that is uncontrollable by humans.

Musk stated last year at the AI Safety Summit in Britain that he intended to create a "third-party referee" that would supervise companies working on AI and raise red flags if they felt unsafe.