Mysterious, incredibly powerful AI model appears online

A mysterious new AI model called Ox Alpha is generating excitement and confusion among artificial intelligence experts.

The system is available to use for free, and benchmarks suggest that it could be as good as some of the highest-profile models from mainstream companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI. But it remains entirely unclear who actually made it.

Ox Alpha appeared on an AI marketplace called OpenRouter last week. It has a label indicating that it is a "steal model", and that it is "developed and operated by a third-party provider who has chosen to remain anonymous during this preview".

The same website makes clear that prompts people give to the system are "retained by the provider", though it stresses that they "are not used for training". As such, it is difficult to know what might happen to any data that is fed into the system.

But developers are already doing so. Ox Alpha is able to process text, image and video input, and is available for free with nearly unlimited usage, despite its relatively large power.

Tech commentators praised the model, with Stripe chief executive Patrick Collison calling it "very impressive". But analysts also rushed to work out who might have built it – and what the rollout might mean for the global rush to build the most powerful AI tools.