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OpenAI has introduced two new AI models that are available for anyone to download, customize, and use for free. This move aims to rival similar offerings from both U.S. and Chinese competitors. It’s a significant step toward democratizing access to powerful AI tools, moving beyond just big technology corporations.
The models, named gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b, are “open-weight language models,” meaning their trained parameters are publicly accessible, allowing users to fine-tune them as needed. This marks a rare return to releasing open-weight models in language AI, a development welcomed by many industry observers.
Meta promotes its open-source AI strategies, while Chinese startup DeepSeek has made waves with a cost-effective, high-performance model that also adopts an open-weight approach, enabling further customization. Greg Brockman, co-founder and president of OpenAI, shared his excitement, noting, “This is the first time in a long while that we’re revealing an open-weight language model, and it’s truly remarkable.”
According to OpenAI, these text-only models offer high performance at a low cost, making them suitable for tasks like web searches or executing programming code. They’re also designed to be easily run on local computers. Altman hopes this release will spur new research and innovative products.
The company is working with partners such as French telecom giant Orange and cloud data platform Snowflake to explore practical uses of these models. OpenAI has also implemented safeguards to prevent misuse and malicious applications.
Earlier this year, Altman acknowledged that OpenAI had been too secretive about its technology at times. He later announced that the organization would remain a nonprofit, abandoning plans to transform into a for-profit entity — a move that had stirred tension among investors and drew criticism from AI safety advocates and Elon Musk, a co-founder who left the company in 2018 and later sued, claiming the transition violated the organization’s founding principles.
Under the restructuring, OpenAI’s profit-driven branch will continue operating but under the oversight of the nonprofit’s board, maintaining its mission-focused approach.
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