May 21 (Reuters) - International Business Machines ( IBM )

on Tuesday said that it will release a family of

artificial intelligence models as open-source software, and that

it will help Saudi Arabia train an AI system in Arabic.

The Armonk, New York-based company has taken a different

approach to making money from AI than some of its rivals such as

Microsoft ( MSFT ) and others that are tightly guarding their AI

models and charging for access to them. Similar to Facebook

owner Meta Platforms ( META ), IBM ( IBM ) is instead providing open

access to the models themselves and on Wednesday opened its

"Granite" family of AI models for companies to customize.

The Granite tools are designed to help software developers

complete computer code faster. To make money off the models, IBM ( IBM )

offers a paid tool it calls Watsonx that helps run the models

smoothly inside a data center after they have been customized.

IBM's ( IBM ) strategy has been to try to make money when customers

actually get use out of AI models, whether they came from IBM ( IBM ) or

others and whether they run in IBM's ( IBM ) data centers or not.

"We believe we're in the early days of generative AI

models," IBM's ( IBM ) Chief Executive Arvind Krishna told Reuters.

"Competition at the end of the day is good for buyers. We also

want to be safe and responsible."

IBM ( IBM ) also said that the Saudi Data and Artificial

Intelligence Authority will train its "ALLaM" Arabic language

model using Watsonx, adding new language skills to IBM's ( IBM )

offerings, including the ability to understand multiple dialects

of Arabic.