By Leo Marchandon
Sept 3 (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi-based research institute IFM on Thursday released six artificial intelligence models together with the data and methods used to build them, challenging an industry trend toward increasingly secretive AI development.
The K2 Horizon release includes model weights, training data, code, methodologies and intermediate checkpoints, allowing researchers to retrace the models' development process and reproduce results, IFM founder Eric Xing told Reuters.
The move
goes beyond the "open-weight" approach used by some Chinese developers, which make models available for download but provide limited insight into how they were built, and contrasts with the more closed development practices of companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, which neither release their models for download nor disclose the data and techniques behind them.
"Our goal with this release is to establish a reference point for what a truly open model release can look like," Xing said.
He said the release was also intended to show policymakers, regulators and public-interest advocates that "openness and competitive performance are not mutually exclusive."
The launch forms part of the UAE's push to establish itself as a global AI hub.
The model family ranges from one designed for smartwatches and other constrained devices to a 375-billion-parameter system for enterprise deployments.
(Reporting by Leo Marchandon in Gdansk; Editing by Matt Scuffham)
