Elon Musk's xAI to release ChatGPT rival Grok publicly

Elon Musk has said his artificial intelligence firm xAI will open-source "Grok", a chatbot rivalling OpenAI's ChatGPT, this week.

The billionaire's startup launched the AI model to a small group of users last November.

In a podcast episode with Lex Fridman, Musk suggested that he liked the concept of open-source AI.

For years, Musk has warned that the generative AI models that power programs such as ChatGPT could one day prove an existential threat to humanity.

But he is also investing heavily in the nascent industry and hopes to use the technology in his other companies, including Tesla, SpaceX and X.

OpenAI

Musk has said he cofounded OpenAI in 2015 because he regarded the dash by Google into the sector to make big advances and score profits as reckless.

He then left OpenAI in 2018 to focus on Tesla, saying later he was uncomfortable with the profit-driven direction the company was taking under the stewardship of CEO Sam Altman.

Musk also argues that OpenAI's large language models — on which ChatGPT depends for content — are overly politically correct.

The multibillionaire is one of the world's few investors with deep enough pockets to compete with OpenAI, Google or Meta on AI.

Building an AI model at the same scale as those companies comes at an enormous expense in computing power, infrastructure and expertise.