There are no viable free versions with sufficient computing power. The do-it-yourself AI is dangled as a carrot in front of users to camouflage the lock-in and rent seeking by Big AI. Go prove something new like Navier Stokes (replicating N-S itself no longer counts due to scraping and plagiarism) on your Mac Pro!

Paid influencers who perpetuate the open narrative are a whole new industry.

Even if there were open models, it is still IP theft and would not be "democratization" but "forced unpaid nationalization".