The platform and the models
Z.ai is a platform providing AI chat, models, and developer APIs. GLM is the name of the family of large language and multimodal models used within it.
The developer is known as ZhipuAI in China and has been building models since the early GLM and ChatGLM releases; the Z.ai brand is now the more visible one. Z.ai is the service and provider; GLM is the model behind it.
What GLM covers
- Language models for writing, reasoning, and coding
- Vision models that read images
- Models that generate images and video
- Agent-oriented models that use tools across multiple steps
- Published models you can run in your own environment
GLM spans many generations, sizes, and purposes. ChatGLM is a name used for conversational models specifically — not every new GLM is a ChatGLM.
Compared with Qwen, DeepSeek, and Kimi
GLM, Qwen, and DeepSeek are commonly compared as families of large models from Chinese labs. Their coverage overlaps across text, reasoning, coding, and image understanding, but they differ in which models are published, licensing, APIs, and where their strengths lie.
Kimi is known as a user-facing assistant, running Moonshot AI models underneath. In the same way, using GLM through the Z.ai interface and running a published GLM yourself are different things.
What “open” means here
Some GLM models have downloadable weights, but not every model or service is released on the same terms. Something described as open source may in practice be open weights with usage conditions.
Check the license per model for commercial use, modification, and redistribution. Before sending confidential material to a web interface or API, check where data is stored, whether it is used for training, and the operating region — and verify the accuracy of answers against other sources.