On Wednesday, Stability AI released a new family of open source AI language models called StableLM. Stability hopes to repeat the catalyzing effects of its Stable Diffusion open source image synthesis model, launched in 2022. With refinement, StableLM could be used to build an open source alternative to ChatGPT.
StableLM is currently available in alpha form on GitHub in 3 billion and 7 billion parameter model sizes, with 15 billion and 65 billion parameter models to follow, according to Stability. The company is releasing the models under the Creative Commons BY-SA-4.0 license, which requires that adaptations must credit the original creator and share the same license.
Stability AI Ltd. is a London-based firm that has positioned itself as an open source rival to OpenAI, which, despite its “open” name, rarely releases open source models and keeps its neural network weights—the mass of numbers that defines the core functionality of an AI model—proprietary.