Advocates for "decentralized" AI are raising money, delivering new tools and starting new companies in a bid to bypass the biggest tech companies and empower individual users.

The big picture: AI decentralizers aim to put users in control of their data, strengthen privacy and boost access to cutting-edge AI tools while routing around fights over intellectual property, looming government regulations and a shortage of high-end chips.

Context: Decentralized AI isn't always simple to define.

• Many advocates seek to build AI's decentralized future on a foundation of blockchain — the same tech that underlies cryptocurrency.
• Others concentrate on outcomes and pursue any practical project that succeeds in empowering users, protecting personal data and broadening access to advanced AI hardware.

Between the lines: Advocates say that the spread of open source AI models hasn't proven a strong enough force to democratize AI.

• Although those models now make up the majority of the nearly 600,000 AI models listed on Hugging Face, they have also been embraced by Big Tech.

Driving the news: Emad Mostaque, who stepped down March 22 as CEO of Stability AI, says his next career move is to go "all in" on decentralized AI. He elaborated his views on the "Moonshots" podcast.

• He wants alternatives to market leaders, distrusts OpenAI ("there's clearly no governance") and worries that governments will lock down AI out of fear of losing control over it.
• "Once a government embraces centralized technology, it's very hard to decentralize it," he said.
• That led him to support "a national model for every country, owned by the people of that country," reflecting local knowledge and culture.

How it works: AI decentralizers see blockchain as a way to make AI tamper-proof, ethical and transparent compared to "black box" systems operated by industry leaders like OpenAI, Microsoft and Google.

• Advocates also say they can deliver benefits ranging from greater data privacy to more customization of AI to more efficient information exchange and wider access to everything from chatbots to chips.
• One use of blockchain is in providing decentralized GPU networks — as with The Render Network, which seeks to deliver more affordable access to idle GPU computing power through a blockchain marketplace.

But "decentralization is not just about blockchain, it's about giving power to individuals," including ways for us to run our personal data locally, Suman Kanuganti, founder and CEO of Personal AI, tells Axios.

• Kanuganti's product is a subscription-based AI assistant that's trained on your personal data, secured through a blockchain. It plugs into bigger AI models only when it needs to help complete a task.
• "Our thesis is your memory should be owned by you: Your own digital twin is a digital asset," he says.

The latest: Today, Vana, a decentralized AI platform, launched a method for Reddit users to pool their data and sell it to companies training AI models, or to Reddit itself.

• Founder Anna Kazlauskas tells Axios that under EU and California data laws, users can ask Reddit to send them copies of their data — "their own data treasury" — and, through Vana, pool that data and strike licensing deals with it.
• "We provide the infrastructure for the data to be held in escrow," Kazlauskas says, charging a "small" transaction fee.
• Based on how much data members of the group contribute, they will receive voting rights on proposed deals to sell the information.

Another decentralized AI startup, MyShell — a platform for creators of AI chatbots and products that claims 50,000 registered creators — raised $11 million in a funding round announced last week.

Zoom out: Decentralized AI supporters see myriad long-term benefits.

• Niraj Pant, co-founder at Ritual, views decentralized AI as "a new form of censorship resistance," he tells Axios.
• Kazlauskas asks us to "imagine a foundation model trained by 100 million people," all getting some form of reward.

Reality check: Decentralized AI remains embryonic, and it might fizzle out the way many decentralized social media projects over the last decade did.

• The blockchain technology AI decentralizers rely on has so far failed to find broad public acceptance beyond its use in powering cryptocurrencies — which have themselves lost a great deal of public trust.

More than 200 musical artists — including heavy-hitters such as Billie Eilish, Katy Perry and Smokey Robinson — have penned an open letter to AI developers, tech firms and digital platforms to "cease the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists," Sara Fischer reports.

Why it matters: It's one of the strongest positions the music industry has collectively taken to advocate for artists in the AI era.

Between the lines: Unlike other advocacy efforts from creators around AI, this letter specifically addresses tech firms about artists' concerns, such as replicating their voices, using their work to train AI models without compensation and diluting royalty pools that are paid out to them.

• Jen Jacobsen, executive director at The Artist Rights Alliance (ARA), the trade group representing the artists signing the letter, tells Axios, "We're not thinking about legislation here."
• "We're kind of calling on our technology and digital partners to work with us to make this a responsible marketplace, and to keep the quality of the music sound, and not to replace human artists," she says.

Details: The letter, penned by dozens of well-known musicians within ARA, specifically calls on tech firms and AI developers to stop the "predatory use of AI to steal professional artists' voices and likenesses, violate creators' rights, and destroy the music ecosystem."

• Signatories include Elvis Costello, Norah Jones, Nicki Minaj, Camila Cabello, Kacey Musgraves, Jon Batiste, Ja Rule, Jason Isbell, Pearl Jam, Sam Smith and dozens more, spanning every musical genre.
• The letter acknowledges that there are ways AI — when used responsibly — can advance human creativity. But it argues that some platforms and AI developers broadly are using the technology "to sabotage creativity and undermine artists, songwriters, musicians and rights holders."

The big picture: The music industry is starting to back bills that would protect its work from AI copyright issues, but those efforts are mostly targeted to lawmakers.

OpenAI will allow people to query ChatGPT without first creating an account, the company announced yesterday, Ina reports.

Why it matters: The move makes it easier for people to access ChatGPT and has potential privacy benefits, but could also complicate OpenAI's efforts to fight abuse of its systems.

• OpenAI says it's started rolling out the new capability gradually.
• By default, queries made while logged out will be used to train OpenAI's models, but there is an option to turn this off, even for those who choose not to sign up with OpenAI.
• OpenAI noted the benefits of creating an account, including the ability to save your history, share chats and create custom instructions.

Between the lines: To help mitigate the added risk, OpenAI said it will block prompts and results for a broader range of queries.

• A company representative tells Axios that OpenAI worked with internal teams dedicated to detecting and preventing abuse, and carefully considered the ways that bad actors could misuse a logged-out experience.

Go deeper: Axios Explains: How to use ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini AI tools

• OpenAI's Startup Fund is now controlled by Ian Hathaway — co-founder of Far Out Ventures — rather than the company's CEO, Sam Altman. (Axios) 
• Generative AI search engine Perplexity will start selling ads, after saying it wouldn't follow that business model. (Adweek)
• Jon Stewart told FTC Chair Lina Khan that Apple asked him not to interview her for a podcast. (Axios)
• The U.K. and the U.S. agreed to work together to safety-test AI models. (Time)
• Shares in former President Trump's Truth Social network plunged 21.5% and his net worth fell by more than $1 billion yesterday. (Axios)

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