OpenAI takes on Meta and DeepSeek with free and customisable AI models

OpenAI is taking on Mark Zuckerberg's Meta and Chinese rival DeepSeek by launching its own freely available artificial intelligence models. The ChatGPT developer has announced two "open weight" large language models, which are free to download and can be customised by developers. Meta's Llama models are available on a similar basis, and OpenAI's move marks a departure from ChatGPT, which is based on a "closed" model that cannot be customised. Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, said the company was excited to add to a stack of freely available AI models "based on democratic values … and for wide benefit". He added: "We're excited to make this model, the result of billions of dollars of research, available to the world to get AI into the hands of the most people possible." OpenAI said the models could underpin an AI agent that operates autonomously, and that they were "designed to be used within agentic workflows".