An ethical and open artificial intelligence.
This is the commitment of the Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit organization behind the development of the Firefox browser which has just turned 25, to counter the big names in technology such as Google and Microsoft who are at the forefront of AI.
Mozilla will invest $30 million to launch Mozilla.ai, a new startup with a mission to build open source, reliable AI in line with its founding principles.
The aim is to create artificial intelligence apps and products within an independent and decentralized ecosystem compared to the scenario that sees big tech companies, such as Microsoft and Google, currently sharing the market with their projects.
The currently planned team has 25 people, including engineers, scientists and product managers, to work on large language models.
Mozilla provided few details on the launch of Mozilla.ai but the website refers to building "a trusted open source AI ecosystem" that aims not only to develop products but also to understand how to make the processes that govern the algorithms transparent.
Mozilla's intent is not to demonize current AI projects, as CEO Mitchell Baker explains.
"We have to give people a reason to make them switch browsers - Baker explained to The Verge site - not much has happened in the last ten years but artificial intelligence is opening up a new world".
The startup's announcement comes just as the two biggest names in AI for the general public, Microsoft and Google, are pushing their respective initiatives.
The first presented the new Office suite enhanced by artificial intelligence, under the name of Microsoft 365 Copilot, while Big G made the Bard chatbot available in a preview version to an audience of selected users in the United States and in the United Kingdom Kingdom, with the aim of extending the trial to other countries in the coming months.