What are ‘open’ AI models?

Open models can be run internally, cut off from the cloud. That provides additional security, especially for regulated industries where data control is paramount. “There’s definitely a gravitation towards comfort level on more of an open model and relying on, ‘Hey, I want everything on-prem. I want this on the system of work,’” Han said.

Companies are going to want models trained on their proprietary information, and will need solid control over the tools because of IP leakage worries, said Craig LeClair, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research “Open source models will be run in controlled on-premise environments, which just makes them less open source pretty quickly,” LeClair said.

Open models allow enterprises to “inspect the weights, audit the training data, or air-gap the deployment,” Gartner’s Goss said. “You can’t govern what you can’t see.”