Paris-based Mistral AI enters the arena with free and powerful new language model

The new LL.M. is free, open source, and stands up well against more established competitors.

Image created using Mistral AI

Mistral AI has unveiled its latest technological marvel: the Mistral 7B. The new open source large language model (LLM) aims to provide a blend of power and accessibility, and provide a reliable alternative to more established players such as OpenAI ChatGPT, Claude AI and Google Bard.

Paris-based Mistral claims its models are powerful and better than the competition. While evaluating such claims is a relative exercise in weighing the pros and cons, reporters' tests found plenty to brag about.

Starting with the alluring Bitcoin theme, Mistral's latest version (called Mistral 7B) scored 8.5/10 on the GPT-4 test of generating paragraphs that begin with the phrase "Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency." The Paris prodigy went up against his predecessors, beating LlaMA-2 7B (score of 8/10) and Stability AI’s Stable Beluga 2 (score of 7/10).

Text generation for Mistral. Source: Hugging Face decryption

What sets Mistral apart most is its emphasis on openness and adaptability.

"We will release Mistral 7B under the Apache 2.0 license, which can be used without restrictions," the company said. “Using open models is the best way for vendors and users to build sustainable businesses around AI solutions.”

This approach advances the democratization of AI and ensures transparency, and allows developers to inspect, adapt, and improve existing code bases to innovate faster.

Mistral also offers users greater privacy because it runs on a local computer and does not require access to the internet or a specific cloud service.

The company says its mission is focused on developing open-weight models that are "comparable to proprietary solutions." Not constrained by a fixed business model, Mistral AI can benefit numerous areas including research and development, customer service, and marketing.

Paris certainly has more to offer than the Louvre or Notre Dame: the city of lights is also fostering a strong AI scene.

You can download Mistral 7b directly to your computer, or use the cloud implementation on Hugging Face.