SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI on Tuesday released two new artificial intelligence (AI) models that can be downloaded for free and altered by users, to challenge similar offerings by US and Chinese competition.

The release of gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b “open-weight language models” comes as the ChatGPT-maker is under pressure to share inner workings of its software in the spirit of its origin as a nonprofit.

“Going back to when we started in 2015, OpenAI’s mission is to ensure AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) that benefits all of humanity,” said OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman.

An open-weight model, in the context of generative AI, is one in which the trained parameters are made public, enabling users to fine-tune it.

Meta touts its open-source approach to AI, and Chinese AI startup DeepSeek rattled the industry with its low-cost, high-performance model boasting an open weight approach that allows users to customize the technology.

“This is the first time that we’re releasing an open-weight model in language in a long time, and it’s really incredible,” OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman said during a briefing with journalists.

The new, text-only models deliver strong performance at low cost, according to OpenAI, which said they are suited for AI jobs like searching the internet or executing computer code, and are designed to be easy to run on local computer systems.