In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) models have revolutionized the way we approach both personal and business tasks. From generating a text to win an argument with your significant other to integrating an AI chatbot onto your website, AI tools are becoming more accessible and powerful.

The AI world is typically split into two camps, which you’ve probably heard of before—Open Source and Closed Source. But what does this mean? Which one should you go with for your business or individual use? Understanding the differences between these two types is the first step to making informed choices about which model best suits your needs. 

For this article won’t dive into the detailed technical aspects or the ever-ongoing discourse over the regulation of AI. This will simply provide a foundational understanding of the differences between these types of models and how you can start exploring them for yourself. Let’s get started.

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Open-Source AI Models are free to access, modify, and share. These models give you a lot of control—you can change how they work, train them on your own data, and customize them to do exactly what you need. Think of an open-source model like a custom-built bike: you can choose every detail—gear ratio, wheel size, frame—but you need the right tools and skills to put it together and make it work.

A key point to understand is that there are many different types of open-source models available, from natural language processing (NLP) to multimodal and computer vision. These models have a basic foundation, but it’s up to you to provide them with the knowledge they need to perform tasks. The model’s responses depend entirely on the data you train it on.

• The advantage? Full customization.
• The limitation? It requires technical expertise and maintenance.

Closed-Source AI Models are owned and managed by a company. You can use them through an interface or API, but you can’t change how they work behind the scenes. These models are designed to be easy and ready to use. Like choosing a pre-built bike—you can pick the color and type (road bike or mountain bike), but you can’t change the internal mechanics. For most people and businesses, this is perfect because it works right out of the box.

• The advantage? Super easy to use.
• The limitation? Limited flexibility for customization.

In short, the key difference is control. Open-source models let you fine-tune the AI but require more effort to manage. Closed-source models are ready to use but offer less freedom to customize.

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How to Get Started with Open-Source and Closed-Source Models

Open-source models are perfect if you want full control and flexibility, but you’ll need to be comfortable with managing the technical side, like setting up environments and training the model on specific datasets. For example, if you wanted to customize a chatbot for your business, you could download an open-source NLP model and train it to understand the specific terminology used in your industry.

Getting Started with Closed-Source Models

For closed-source models, it’s much easier to get started without requiring as much technical expertise. For individual use, you can just go to ChatGPT or Claude and immediately start generating text with just a prompt. If you’ve never interacted with an LLM before, I highly recommend trying this out first. If you’re interested in generating images, tools like Midjourney or DALL-E 3 provide a straightforward way to create visuals without needing to manage the technical setup involved with open-source models.

Here’s a link to OpenAI’s (ChatGPT) and Anthropic’s (Claude) API pages for more information on how to fit these models to your needs.

While these models are designed to be user-friendly, integrating them into a business using APIs may still require some basic technical skill, though not as much as open-source models.

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Final Thoughts

Choosing between open-source and closed-source AI models comes down to what you need and what you’re comfortable managing. Open-source models offer the freedom to customize and adapt the AI to your exact needs, but they require more technical expertise. On the other hand, closed-source models are ready to use, with little setup required, but you sacrifice some flexibility. For individuals new to AI, closed-source tools like ChatGPT or Claude are a great place to start. For businesses, the choice will depend on how much control and customization you need.

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Author’s Note: I use AI in my writing to help with formatting, readability, and fact-checking. I do my best to double check every source and fact, but just like how AI can make mistakes, so can humans. If I missed anything or if something is incorrect, please let me know by emailing me at jmeredithmkt@gmail.com or connect with me on LinkedIn here.