The nonprofit Linux Foundation has announced that is working on an open source AI project, and AT&T is one of the founding organizations. Called the Acumos Project, its goal, like many open source platforms, is to enable a free exchange of ideas and machine learning solutions using an artificial intelligence framework -- and eventually become a marketplace for AI apps and services.

The Acumos Project aims to provide tools for casual users, not data scientists, and will focus first on making apps and microservices. While The Linux Foundation's announcement was light on details, it noted that it will sustain the Acumos Project for some time and AT&T and other founder Tech Mahindra will contribute code.

"Artificial intelligence is a critical tool for growing our business. However, the current state of today's AI environment is fractured, which creates a significant barrier to adoption," Mazin Gilbert, Vice President of Advanced Technology at AT&T Labs said in a statement. "Acumos will expedite innovation and deployment of AI applications, and make them available to everyone."

Acumos Project code will become available nearer to the platform's launch in early 2018.