By Stephen Nellis
(Reuters) – International Business Machines (NYSE:) said on Tuesday it will release a family of artificial intelligence models as open source software and help Saudi Arabia train an AI system in Arabic.
The Armonk, New York-based company has taken a different approach to monetizing AI than some of its rivals, such as Microsoft (NASDAQ:) and others that tightly guard their AI models and charge fees for access to them. Similar to Facebook owner Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:), IBM instead offers open access to the models themselves, and on Wednesday opened its “Granite” family of AI models for companies to customize.
The Granite tools are designed to help software developers complete computer code faster. To monetize the models, IBM offers a paid tool called Watsonx, which allows the models to run smoothly in a data center after they have been modified.
IBM’s strategy has been to try to make money when customers actually use AI models, whether they come from IBM or others and whether they run in IBM data centers or not.
“We believe we are in the early days of generative AI models,” IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told Reuters. “Competition is ultimately good for buyers. We also want to work safely and responsibly.”
IBM also said the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority will train its “ALLaM” Arabic language model using Watsonx, adding new language skills to IBM’s offering, including the ability to understand multiple Arabic dialects.
