Elon Musk’s xAI open-sources base model of Grok

xAI has confirmed the open release of its Grok artificial intelligence (AI) model, detailing the weights and architecture of the system. 

Elon Musk’s company detailed the Grok-1 version as a “314 billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts model trained from scratch by xAI.” In addition, the San Francisco-based startup outlined how the model had been instructed on a large volume of text data rather than tailored toward any specific task.

No training code is required, as users can head directly to Git Hub to get started with the large language model (LLM). 

In an effort to solicit input from the research community on potential enhancements, companies like xAI can make their LLMs either fully open-source or available through limited open-source releases.

Grok has also been available to premium subscribers on X, the prominent social media platform formerly known as Twitter before Musk’s takeover.

What is the legal dispute between Elon Musk and OpenAI?

Last week, the billionaire announced xAI would open-source Grok at a time when he is embroiled in a bitter legal battle with rival firm OpenAI, which he was previously associated with as a co-founder.

Musk, 52, walked away to take a different direction in AI development and now he has sued the maker of ChatGPT and its incumbent CEO, Sam Altman, for allegedly reneging on its original purpose to build AI for the benefit of humanity and not for the pursuit of profit.

In response, OpenAI has rebuked the legal action, stating it is based on “convoluted – often incoherent – factual premises”, in a court filing as part of the counterclaim.

An official blog post that accompanied an email to company employees appeared to dismiss the early influence and impact of Musk on Open AI. 

The firm implored it has stayed true to its mission “to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity, which means both building safe and beneficial AGI”, “every step of the way”.

It was penned collectively by Altman, Greg Brockman, John Schulman, Ilya Sutskever, and Wojciech Zaremba, and detailed how the firm had raised less than $45 million from Musk, despite his pledge to bring in up to $1 billion in funding.

Image source: x.ai