Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan has vocalized her support for open AI models, saying they could prove the key to preventing AI monopolies.

According to Bloomberg, Khan made the comments at Y Combinator in San Francisco.

“There’s tremendous potential for open-weight models to promote competition,” Khan said. “Open-weight models can liberate startups from the arbitrary whims of closed developers and cloud gatekeepers.”

Khan’s comments come at a time when regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are growing increasingly wary of Big Tech. AI companies have done little to stave off such concerns, with accusations they plagiarize content, throttle organizations’ servers as they scrape them, and show little regard for the potential danger AI may pose.

In view those issues, many lawmakers are concerned about a future where AI development and breakthroughs are largely controlled by a handful of companies.

One notable exception in the industry is Meta’s Llama AI model, which the company has made available as open-source software. The company explained its reasons in a blog post announcing Llama 3:

We’re committed to the continued growth and development of an open AI ecosystem for releasing our models responsibly. We have long believed that openness leads to better, safer products, faster innovation, and a healthier overall market. This is good for Meta, and it is good for society. We’re taking a community-first approach with Llama 3, and starting today, these models are available on the leading cloud, hosting, and hardware platforms with many more to come.

With Khan’s comments, LLama and other open models may see an uptick in use.