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Artificial intelligence

OpenAI to build open AI model as it faces competition from Meta and China’s DeepSeek

Announcement marks a strategic shift by OpenAI, which until now has been a fierce defender of closed, proprietary models

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. File photo: Reuters
Agence France-Presse
Artificial intelligence powerhouse OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, on Monday announced it is building a more open generative AI model as it faces growing competition in the open-source space from Chinese rival DeepSeek and Meta.

The announcement marks a strategic shift by OpenAI, which until now has been a fierce defender of closed, proprietary models that do not allow developers to modify the basic technology to make AI more adapted to their goals.

OpenAI and defenders of closed models - which include Google - have often decried open models as more risky and vulnerable to nefarious uses by bad actors or foreign adversaries.
OpenAI’s embrace of closed models has also been a bone of contention in its battles with former investor Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, who has called on OpenAI to honour the spirit of the company’s name and “return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was”.

Putting pressure on OpenAI, many large companies and governments have proved reluctant to build their AI products or services on models they have no control over, especially when data security is a concern.

The core selling point of Meta’s family of Llama models or DeepSeek’s models is addressing these worries by letting companies download their models and have far greater control to modify the technology for their own purposes and keep control of their data.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this month that Llama hit one billion downloads, while the release of DeepSeek’s lower-cost R1 model in January rocked the world of artificial intelligence.
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