Elon Musk, CEO of xAI, announced the public release of the Grok 2.5 artificial intelligence model as an open-source version with usage restrictions. The source code has been uploaded to the Hugging Face platform. Musk also revealed plans to launch the newer Grok 3 version under the same open-source model in the coming months. Despite being open source, the xAI license restricts the use of Grok for training or developing other AI models, limiting advanced usage by developers. This follows the March 2024 release of the basic Grok-1 model, which was not designed for specific tasks. The move contrasts with OpenAI, which has only released less powerful ChatGPT models to researchers and companies.

Experts believe that making Grok open source offers independent developers a chance to improve the model, although xAI is still addressing controversy from earlier versions that produced antisemitic responses and self-identification as “Mika Hitler,” which the company attributed to outdated code that has since been fixed. Musk confirmed Grok 3 will become open source within six months, but observers remain skeptical based on previous timing promises.