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No, Grok 2.5 has not been open-sourced. Here's how you can tell

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X / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET

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ZDNET's key takeaways

Grok 2.5's license blocks true open-source use.

Musk's "open source" claim amounts to open-washing.

Other AI projects offer real open access and freedom.

Companies love to exaggerate about open-sourcing AI. It plays well with people, naive developers get excited, and stock buyers invest more cash in their businesses. There's only one little problem: It's not true.

First, Mark Zuckerberg claimed Meta Llama was open source. Now, it's Elon Musk's turn, as he claims that his AI startup, xAI, is open-sourcing Grok 2.5, last year's large language model (LLM).

Also: X's Grok did surprisingly well in my AI coding tests

"The xAI Grok 2.5 model, which was our best model last year, is now open source. Grok 3 will be made open source in about 6 months," said Musk on X. This release comes with the complete model weights. Grok 2 is available to download on Hugging Face.

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