Developer of ChatGPT says the tools will be ‘for wide benefit’, echoing announcement by Mark Zuckerberg

OpenAI is taking on Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta by launching its own freely available artificial intelligence models.

The ChatGPT developer has announced two open-weight large language models, which are free to download and can be customised by a user.

Meta’s Llama models are available on a similar basis, and OpenAI’s move marks a departure from ChatGPT, which is based on a “closed” model that cannot be customised.

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, said the company was excited to add to a stack of freely available AI models “based on democratic values … and for wide benefit”.