Post Syndicated from original https://lwn.net/Articles/931853/

When OpenAI made its chatbot ChatGPT available to the public
in November 2022, it immediately became a hit. However, despite the
company’s name, the underlying algorithm isn’t open. Furthermore, ChatGPT
users require a connection to OpenAI’s cloud service and face usage
restrictions. In the meantime, several open-source or freely available
alternatives have
emerged, with some even able to run on consumer hardware. Although they
can’t match ChatGPT’s performance yet, rapid advancements are occurring in
this field, to the extent that some people at the companies developing these
artificial intelligence (AI) models have begun to worry.