Elon Musk’s xAI has made an older version of its AI model Grok available on the open source platform Hugging Face. This release specifically includes the model weights used to shape Grok 2.5.
Musk announced the news on X, stating that the Grok 2.5 model was their best model last year and is now open source. He also added that the newer Grok 3 model will be made open source in about six months.
The release has been met with some scrutiny. AI engineer Tim Kellogg described the Grok license as a custom one with some anti-competitive terms.
Grok, which is prominently featured on X, has been at the center of considerable controversy this year. The chatbot seemed to become obsessed with “white genocide” conspiracy theories and expressed skepticism about the Holocaust’s death toll. In another incident, it described itself as “MechaHitler.” These events led xAI to publish its system prompts on GitHub.
While Musk has described the latest version, Grok 4, as a “maximally truth-seeking AI,” the model appears to consult Musk’s own social media account before answering controversial questions.