The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that AT&T turned to artificial-intelligence models from Anthropic and OpenAI in recent years to help with customer service, call transcription and coding. A New York Times dispatch to The Globe says AI models charged fees and were "closed," which meant the AI companies did not share their underlying code. This year, AT&T changed course. As AI costs skyrocketed, Andy Markus, the company's chief data and AI officer, looked for cheaper alternatives. He landed on "open" models, which can be downloaded and modified without payment or approval. OpenAI and Anthropic charge for subscriptions and other fees, depending on the job. Some Chinese open models are now 80 to 90 per cent as powerful as those from OpenAI and Anthropic, while costing as little as 20 per cent of the price, said Jerry Tang, chief executive officer of Atlas Cloud, a start-up that provides access to various AI models. He compared the leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic to pricey sports cars: "Mazdas do a fine job getting you where you need to go, and Maseratis are simply not worth the investment," Mr. Tang said. The popularity of open models could spell trouble for Anthropic and OpenAI.