Fudan's ChatGPT-like bot MOSS to be open source in mid-April

MOSS, a ChatGPT-like AI bot developed by Fudan University, will be open source this month, to create a "China Path" to use generative artificial intelligence tools.

Organizations and programmers can access MOSS's codes on Github for free, from middle of April, Qiu Xipeng, head of MOSS's developers and a professor at the School of Computer Science at Fudan University, told a forum during the weekend.

ChatGPT and its developer OpenAI has rich capital and data resources, with major investors like Microsoft. The AI bots have been quickly adopted in cloud, office tools and the Bing search engine.

Comparatively, Chinese developers, even like tech giant Baidu, have limited resources. Most data are separate and not shared, which have forced firms to carry out many low-value and duplicated work.

Credit: Zhu Shenshen / SHINE

Qiu said the open source may be a "China path" for AIGC development.

"We hope to promote this ecology with open source (generative language) model to avoid duplicated works," Qiu told a Beyond ChatGPT Forum organized by the School of Management, Fudan University.

"On the model, you can focus on respective segment development, such as e-commerce, education and medication."

MOSS has limited parameters and interactive data compared with ChatGPT. But its capabilities will be enhanced when it gains access to external knowledge bases or learns to search for or use tools in specific domains, experts said.

On February 20, shortly after MOSS's beta test went live, the website was flooded with enthusiastic users.

In China, firms like Baidu have also developed AI bots like Ernie Bot. But with limited computing capabilities, many users are still on the waiting list to access the Baidu services since its debut in March.

Meanwhile, MOSS will be "in line" with ethics and humane values, Qiu added.