Why did OpenAI release models with open weights? To kill their own business... (or no?) Yes, @OpenAI just released two models with open weights, which means developers can use them without paying OpenAI anything. Specifically, it's released under the most liberal commercial Apache 2.0 license. So why did OpenAI do this? There are several aspects. But, I want to clarify that when a company releases a model with open weights, it doesn't mean the model is as open-source as open-source code that you can run yourself, like the @Linux operating system. No, with AI models it's a bit different. In particular, a model is a black box, a set of weights. And while you can test it on different tasks and see how it works, if you can't reproduce the training process, you can never know if there are any backdoors or security vulnerabilities that intentionally or accidentally ended up inside this model. So let's separate this from open source right away. Unfortunately, models with open source weights cannot be fully trusted (they can be chep though). The other aspect I noticed, shown in the picture, is that the quality of open-source models isn't very different from OpenAI's flagship models that are only available through API. This is great! This is unexpected! You'd think how much money OpenAI could lose by allowing developers to use their models? However, this isn't everything. Models aren't all you get when using OpenAI through API. For example, when you use ChatGPT via UI and choose the o3 model, there's actually a complex agent working under the hood that, while using these models, has lots of logic written on top to really work well with your documents and tools. You don't access them via these models OpenAI published. So why did OpenAI release models with open weights? First, their main competitors, particularly @Meta, @MistralAI, and @deepseek_ai (oh, and @Google), have already released competitive models with open weights that people use. And OpenAI's popularity among people who use open models isn't growing. However, for developers who need both models with open weights (for local/private calculations) alongside API-accessible models (for harder stuff), if they need both, they simply can't use OpenAI. It's easier for them to use their competitors like Google or DeepSeek. Second, there's significant pressure from both users and regulators who want more openness. People are concerned that AI might get out of control or fall under the control of a narrow group of companies in silicon valley, and people want more transparency. Although I dare say that even just worrying about competition and declining sales, such a move toward openness will likely make OpenAI's business even bigger. And third, of course, there's the joke about OpenAI's company name. Judging by how everything developed, the company named OpenAI was the most closed AI company among the leaders. This is funny in itself, but now this has changed. What do you think?