Aren't people allowed to release source code on free speech grounds? There's not much difference. One could publish a model with its weights, and that would qualify as free speech.
I think the distinction is when a threat is “imminent”. To the point of this thread, I don’t think the dialogue has progressed enough to form a consensus on where that “imminent threshold” lies.
Teaching someone about DNA doesn’t constitute an imminent threat. But the equivalent of teaching the recipe for a biological weapon may be considered enough of an imminent risk to warrant regulation.