Open-source artificial intelligence is an AI system that is freely available to use, study, modify, and share.[1] These attributes extend to each of the system's components, including datasets, code, and model parameters, promoting a collaborative and transparent approach to AI development.[1]Free and open-source software (FOSS) licenses, such as the Apache License, MIT License, and GNU General Public License, outline the terms under which open-source artificial intelligence can be accessed, modified, and redistributed.[2]
The open-source model provides widespread access to new AI technologies, allowing individuals and organizations of all sizes to participate in AI research and development.[3][4] This approach supports collaboration and allows for shared advancements within the field of artificial intelligence.[3][4] In contrast, closed-source artificial intelligence is proprietary, restricting access to the source code and internal components.[3] Only the owning company or organization can modify or distribute a closed-source artificial intelligence system, prioritizing control and protection of intellectual property over external contributions and transparency.[3][5][6] Companies often develop closed products in an attempt to keep a competitive advantage in the marketplace.[6] However, some experts suggest that open-source AI tools may have a development advantage over closed-source products and have the potential to overtake them in the marketplace.[6][4]
Popular open-source artificial intelligence project categories include large language models, machine translation tools, and chatbots.[7] For software developers to produce open-source artificial intelligence (AI) resources, they must trust the various other open-source software components they use in its development.[8][9] Open-source AI software has been speculated to have potentially increased risk compared to closed-source AI as bad actors may remove safety protocols of public models as they wish.[4] Similarly, closed-source AI has also been speculated to have an increased risk compared to open-source AI due to issues of dependence, privacy, opaque algorithms, corporate control and limited availability while potentially slowing beneficial innovation.[10][11][12]
There also is a debate about the openness of AI systems as openness is differentiated[13] – an article in Nature suggests that some systems presented as open, such as Meta's Llama 3, "offer little more than an API or the ability to download a model subject to distinctly non-open use restrictions". Such software has been criticized as "openwashing"[14] systems that are better understood as closed.[11] There are some works and frameworks that assess the openness of AI systems[15][13] as well as a new definition by the Open Source Initiative about what constitutes open source AI.[16][17][18]
^Thummadi, Babu Veeresh (2021). "Artificial Intelligence (AI) Capabilities, Trust and Open Source Software Team Performance". In Denis Dennehy; Anastasia Griva; Nancy Pouloudi; Yogesh K. Dwivedi; Ilias Pappas; Matti Mäntymäki (eds.). Responsible AI and Analytics for an Ethical and Inclusive Digitized Society. 20th International Federation of Information Processing WG 6.11 Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society, Galway, Ireland, September 1–3, 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 12896. Springer. pp. 629–640. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-85447-8_52. ISBN978-3-030-85446-1.
^ abLiesenfeld, Andreas; Lopez, Alianda; Dingemanse, Mark (19 July 2023). "Opening up ChatGPT: Tracking openness, transparency, and accountability in instruction-tuned text generators". Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1–6. arXiv:2307.05532. doi:10.1145/3571884.3604316. ISBN979-8-4007-0014-9.
^Liesenfeld, Andreas; Dingemanse, Mark (5 June 2024). "Rethinking open source generative AI: Open washing and the EU AI Act". The 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1774–1787. doi:10.1145/3630106.3659005. ISBN979-8-4007-0450-5.
^White, Matt; Haddad, Ibrahim; Osborne, Cailean; Xiao-Yang Yanglet Liu; Abdelmonsef, Ahmed; Varghese, Sachin; Arnaud Le Hors (2024). "The Model Openness Framework: Promoting Completeness and Openness for Reproducibility, Transparency, and Usability in Artificial Intelligence". arXiv:2403.13784 [cs.LG].