Be careful when you speak of Open (Source) GenAI. Why OpenAI and Meta (shouldn't) use the word Open within their GenAI efforts?

Examining the implications of using the term "Open" in the context of GenAI by organizations like OpenAI and Meta.

TL;DR 🚅

Background of term open in OpenAI and Open (Source) LLMs 🧑🏽‍🏫

Open source libraries accelerate and improve the IT field including GenAI
Many GenAI models are available on model hubs like Hugging Face
Often those models like Meta LLAMA-3 are called open-source LLMs
OpenAI provides the most successful LLM GPT4
OpenAI does not release their model weights or creation details openly
Elon Musk being a former founder of OpenAI sued them (maybe also cause of other reasons) for being less open than initially founded for

Sam Altman CEO of OpenAI claims in an interview that "Open" is valid as ChatGPT made GenAI/LLMs accessible to the world openly
Meta claims open source as their LLM LLAMA-3 weights are freely downloadable

No one could reproduce OpenAI or Meta's Models, so they are not open-source
This missing open source and open research is an issue for reproducibility, fairness, security, democratization of tech, and environmental impact

OpenAI can take credit for the hype around LLM-based GenAI as they truly opened access to this tool through a (partial) free open chat interface.
Most impactful models on HuggingFace like Meta's LLAMA-3 should be considered being OPEN WEIGHT and not open source. Also, there are sometimes issues with its licenses: https://lnkd.in/dtStQSdn
Truly open source would mean code can entirely reproduce the models
Still, these open-weight models accelerate GenAI/LLM developments

How do you see the possible confusion of the word "open" initially coming from open-source in GenAI efforts of OpenAI and Meta LLAMA-3 open-weight model?
Do you use any truly open-source LLM?

For more content, follow me or our team at Comma Soft AG on LinkedIn ❤️

#artificialintelligence #llm #opensource #llama #genai