Open weights are not open source: Why AI's favorite label is under dispute

What's happening

The label "open weights" is under dispute as more people download and run AI models locally but still lack the ability to inspect or change how those models were trained. Reddit users report turning to open-weight models after OpenAI shut down a protein design project, and others debate which Western open models (GLM, Qwen, DeepSeek) to deploy under corporate restrictions. Tools and projects promoting local use of open-weight models are emerging, including Otis (an open-source agent that downloads and runs models via llama.cpp, Ollama, LM Studio and Nvidia PAIR) and Apple's AFM now available natively on MacOS 27. The Register argues that downloading a model is easy, but understanding how it was made or changing it at the root is not, which fuels the disagreement over whether "open weights" equals true open source.

Why it's trending

Because people can now download and run model weights locally, but that access doesn't guarantee transparency or modifiability, sparking pushback and new tooling for local deployment.

Signal2.0× its usual volume, confirmed across 3 independent source types.