The race between open and closed AI is intensifying, with Mistral AI, a French AI lab, unveiling its latest model, Mistral Large 4 (ML4), on Tuesday. This new large multimodal model aims to surpass both American and Chinese competitors, aligning with French President Macron's vision of establishing a "third way in AI."

Key Features of ML4

  • Nickname: Le Chonk, referencing its 1 trillion parameters.
  • Currently accessible via a public guardrail endpoint, with plans to release its weights in three weeks after safety testing.
  • Designed to be an alternative to both closed models, which can be unplugged, and open models often produced in China.

Pierre Stock, Mistral's VP of Science, emphasized the importance of security, stating, "In the meantime, we’ll work with trusted partners and governments to ensure that the open-source weights can be used to defend, but not to perform malicious attacks."