Dozens of AI companies, led by Nvidia, said on Monday they had formed a coalition called the Open Secure AI Alliance, to develop open-source AI tools for defensive cybersecurity. Days earlier, on Friday, many of those same companies signed an open letter urging the U.S. government not to ban open-weights AI models.

AI models that are open source allow developers and users to see and modify the underlying program code.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to try to quell lawmakers’ and administration officials’ concerns over open-source artificial intelligence models and Chinese competition.

You’ve probably heard artificial intelligence models described as “open” or “closed.” These are not descriptions of the model’s personality. Large language model AIs like the one under the hood of ChatGPT don’t have actual personalities,

Defining and evaluating openness in AI requires examining both the model and system stack, including interfaces, safeguards, infrastructure, and deployment practices

Today’s open letter was published on Nvidia Corp.’s website. It’s also backed by Microsoft Corp., IBM Corp., Meta Platforms Inc. and more than a dozen other tech firms. Several nonprofit industry groups including the The Linux Foundation signed on as well.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for more open-source AI in a speech on Thursday. He encouraged "open-source, openness, collaboration, and sharing."

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei cited China as the primary threat to such a paradigm and cast doubt over the narrative of open-source as a cybersecurity asset.