Open Source AI
AI models released with public weights that can be downloaded, modified, and run without depending on a vendor's API. 'Open source' in AI is contested — some models release weights but not training data or code, so it's a spectrum. The main alternatives to open-source AI are proprietary API models like Claude or GPT-4. Open-source gives you control, privacy, and no per-token costs. Proprietary APIs give you better performance, easier maintenance, and ongoing improvements without effort. Most organizations use both.
In practice
You need to process sensitive legal documents and can't send them to Anthropic's servers for compliance reasons. You deploy an open-source model on your own infrastructure — it runs on your servers, no data leaves your environment. Open-source AI trades the convenience of a managed API for full control over where your data goes.
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