Open-weight models

Using open-source LLMs allows for a large degree of freedom when it comes to picking a model that will best suit your needs. Companies like Mistral AI, Meta or Google have released open-weight models, and the open-source community has fine-tuned them to suit a wide variety of needs.

Note the difference between open-source and open-weight. The major models released by the big companies are Neural Net Weights (NNWs) — not human-readable source code, but the "knowledge" that the artificial neural network has learned.

Caution!

Many open-weight LLMs and their finetunes are uncensored, i.e. they don't have the safety guardrails that a service like ChatGPT might have, where it'll refuse to generate offensive, not safe for work or otherwise controversial output. Keep this in mind when selecting a model for yourself.

Start by getting acquainted with the largest AI community on the web - HuggingFace.co

Alternatively, skip ahead to a list of recommended first models.