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OpenAssistant

Free
open sourceailarge language modelchatbotnlpconversational aicrowdsourcingresearchrlhftext generation

An open-source, community-driven project dedicated to creating a powerful, chat-based AI assistant, including the training data and models, which are made freely available for anyone to use and modify.


OpenAssistant is an ambitious, open-source project created by LAION and a global community of volunteers to build a transparent and accessible chat AI. It operates via a crowdsourcing model, where contributors submit, rank, and refine conversational data to train large language models. The project's primary goal is to provide a powerful, instruction-following AI that serves as a free alternative to proprietary systems like those from OpenAI or Google. Its unique value lies in its commitment to open data, open models, and a transparent training process, aiming to democratize access to advanced AI technology. Though the original project is now archived, its datasets and models remain a valuable resource for developers and researchers in the open-source AI community.

Pros

  • Completely open-source with code, data, and models released under a permissive Apache 2.0 license.
  • The crowdsourced dataset (OASST1) is one of the largest and most diverse of its kind, featuring multilingual content.
  • Provides a powerful, free alternative to proprietary commercial chat models, fostering innovation and research.
  • Transparent training and data collection methodology allows for greater scrutiny and understanding of the model.
  • No usage restrictions or censorship layers imposed by a corporate entity.

Cons

  • The project is officially archived, meaning active development and data collection have ceased.
  • Performance of its models generally lags behind leading-edge proprietary models like GPT-4 or Claude 3.
  • Running the models locally requires significant and costly computational hardware (VRAM).
  • Model quality was entirely dependent on the inconsistent and voluntary contributions of a community.

Key features

  • Crowdsourced data collection platform for conversational AI.
  • Publicly released conversation dataset (OASST1 and OASST2).
  • Pre-trained chat models based on Pythia and LLaMA architectures.
  • Training based on Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF).
  • Web UI for interacting with models and contributing data (now archived).
  • Support for multiple languages in the collected dataset and models.

Integrations

Hugging Face HubPythonPyTorchGitHubOobabooga Web UIKoboldAIDocker

Target audience

AI researchers, open-source developers, students, and technology enthusiasts interested in building, studying, or deploying large language models without proprietary restrictions.


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Founded

2022

Headquarters

Hamburg, Germany

Pricing Tiers

Open Source

Full access to the project's source code on GitHub, datasets on Hugging Face, and pre-trained models. Users are responsible for their own computational costs for running or fine-tuning the models.

Free


Frequently Asked Questions


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HuggingChat

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ChatGPT

Opt for ChatGPT to access state-of-the-art AI performance through a simple interface, ideal for users who prioritize capability and ease-of-use over open-source principles.

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