xAI has released Grok 2 as an open model, including the weights. Elon Musk announced on X that Grok 2.5, xAI's top model for 2024, is now open source. The weights for Grok 2 are available on Hugging Face. Musk also said Grok 3 will be released as open source in about six months.
Grok 2 is available under the xAI Community License. Usage is free for research and non-commercial projects, while commercial use must follow xAI's guidelines. The license prohibits using Grok 2 to develop or train other large AI models. If you redistribute the model, you have to credit the source and include "Powered by xAI."
Open-weight reasoning models often use far more tokens than closed models, making them less efficient per query, according to Nous Research. Models like DeepSeek and Qwen use 1.5 to 4 times more tokens than OpenAI and Grok-4—and up to 10 times more for simple knowledge tasks. Mistral's Magistral models stand out for especially high token use.
Average tokens used per task by different AI models. | Image: Nous ResearchIn contrast, OpenAI's gpt-oss-120b, with very short reasoning paths, shows that open models can be efficient, especially for math problems. Token usage depends heavily on the type of task. Full details and charts are available at Nous Research.
High token use can offset low prices in open models. | Image: Nous Research
This weekend, Google is giving users three free video generations with its AI video tool Veo 3 in the Gemini app. Veo can create short AI videos with sound and is currently the most realistic video model on the market. The promotion runs until Sunday, August 24, at 10:00 p.m. PT.
A humorous 8-second short video portraying a community theater-style play about AI video generation overheating Google's AI chips. | Video: Veo 3 prompted by THE DECODER
Normally, Veo is only available to paid Gemini users, starting at around $20 per month, or through the API for about 50 cents per second. Google could be using this promotion to test the system's stability ahead of a wider release. Since Veo launched, users have generated millions of videos, according to Google, though this activity isn't mentioned in the company's latest AI energy report.
ElevenLabs has released Eleven v3 (alpha), an updated text-to-speech model now available through the API. The new version adds more expressive options, additional controls, and support for over 70 languages. Key changes include a dialog mode that can handle any number of speakers and new audio tags for controlling emotion and voice.
Video: Elevenlabs
The Eleven v3 (alpha) API works with a free account, though some features may require payment. Technical details and examples are in the official documentation. New users can register for free.
