13 open source projects transforming AI and machine learning

From deepfakes to natural language processing and more, the open source world is ripe with projects to support software development on the frontiers of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Open source is fertile ground for transformative software, especially in cutting-edge domains like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The open source ethos and collaboration tools make it easier for teams to share code and data and build on the success of others.

This article looks at 13 open source projects that are remaking the world of AI and machine learning. Some are elaborate software packages that support new algorithms. Others are more subtly transformative. All of them are worth a look.

TensorFlow and PyTorch

A list of open source tools for AI and machine learning would not be complete without a nod to TensorFlow and PyTorch. Separately and together, these OG frameworks support some of the most experimental and important research in machine learning and artificial intelligence. At least a few of the projects discussed in this article use them as building blocks.

FauxPilot

Programmers that need a bit of coding help can get it from FauxPilot. The system trains itself on existing production code and learns enough from it to make structured comments and suggestions. The project was inspired by GitHub Copilot, but FauxPilot lets you select the repositories you use for training. This additional layer of control prevents you from using code snippets from sources that may not approve that use. If you choose your training sources and limit them to only those with appropriate permissions and licenses, the coding help and snippets you use are more likely to be clean and trustable.

One of the easiest ways to get a feeling for how machine learning models “think” is to start plugging words into the DALL-E, a very large, open model constructed from images and text descriptions culled from the internet. In goes a word and out comes an image that DALL-E considers a match. Open source projects like DALL-E Playground and DALL-E Mini make it easier to experiment with the model. It’s partly a game and partly a portal into the mind of an AI algorithm.

YOLOv7

Real-time object detection, or finding objects in images, is a tricky area for artificial intelligence. It’s also critical for things like self-driving cars, robotics, and assistive devices that need to collect and convey accurate environmental information. YOLOv7 is one of the fastest and most accurate open source object detection tools. Just provide the tool with a collection of images full of objects and see what happens next.

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