Hey -

I've been waiting a long time to send you this.

For a while I've been building toward one idea - that you deserve an AI that's actually yours.

Not rented. Not watching you. Not telling you what you want to hear.

Today it's real. And I wanted you to have it first.

It's called Vinci. The first model - piccolo - is live right now. Free. No limits.

Here's what it actually does for you.

You can trust what it tells you.

When it doesn't know something, it says 'I'm not sure' - instead of making something up.

No more confident nonsense you have to go fact-check twice.

And when you need a hard truth, it'll give you one - not the flattery most AI hands you.

I asked it for one the other night:

Most AI hands you a fortune cookie. This one refused to make one up.

You can finally say the real thing.

Your conversations aren't stored, sold, or used to train anything. Nothing is kept by default - and you can run it right on your own machine.

So bring it the stuff you'd never type into ChatGPT.

The career doubt. The draft you're embarrassed by. The decision you've been circling for weeks.

It stays between you and the model. That's the whole point.

And nobody can take it away from you.

Open weights. Apache 2.0. Download it, run it on your laptop, keep it forever.

This week, of all weeks, that matters. Governments are starting to decide who's allowed to use the best AI.

The one you already hold can't be switched off, priced up, or taken back.

I'll be straight about what it isn't.

It's a 4B - a small model. It won't out-reason the giants, and I won't pretend it does.

But for thinking something through, drafting, or just talking it out - it's the one I reach for now.

Every other model feels like it's watching you from across the room. This one feels like it's sitting next to you.

People open up to it. I did - and I'm the one who built it. That's the part I can't get over.

So here's all I'm asking.

Talk to it for five minutes. Not as a fact-checker - as a conversation.

Bring it something real. Something you'd actually think out loud about.

Then hit reply and tell me what you felt. I read every one.

This is just the beginning. Piccolo is the smallest of a family that's coming.

But I wanted you to have the first one. And the first word.

I'll tell you where this came from.

I've been making a lot of AI commentaries lately - about Fable 5 getting pulled away, about what the big labs have become. None of it sat right with me.

Then it hit me. I'm a founder, all along.

This is the thing I have, and the thing I can do, to make it better for everyone.

If I'm going to advocate for open-weight AI, and for owning your AI - there's no excuse not to do it myself.

So I did. And I'm glad to share this moment with you.

You've been here since before there was anything to see. This is the part you get to see first.

Any questions? Just hit reply. Any feedback? Let me know.

Thanks a lot.

• George

P.S. If it moves you, or annoys you, or surprises you - tell me which. Don't be polite. That's the whole point of having you here instead of an audience of strangers.