Meta rolls out new language model amid Big Tech’s AI push

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms said Friday it was releasing a new large language model based on artificial intelligence aimed at the research community, becoming the latest company to join the AI race.

The battle to dominate the AI technology space, which until recently existed in the background, kicked off late last year with the launch of Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT and prompted tech heavyweights from Alphabet  to China’s Baidu to create their own offerings.

Meta’s LLaMA, short for Large Language Model Meta AI, will be available under non-commercial license to researchers and entities affiliated with government, civil society, and academia, it said in a blog.

The company will make available the underlying code for users to tweak the model and use it for research-related use cases. The model, which Meta said requires “far less” computing power, is trained on 20 languages with a focus on those with Latin and Cyrillic alphabets.

“Meta’s announcement today appears to be a step in testing their generative AI capabilities so they can implement them into their products in the future,” said Gil Luria, senior software analyst at D.A. Davidson.

“Generative AI is a new application of AI that Meta has less experience with, but is clearly important for the future of their business.”

AI has emerged as a bright spot for investments in the tech industry, whose slowing growth has led to widespread layoffs and a cutback on experimental bets. Microsoft, Baidu and Alphabet’s Google, meanwhile, are incorporating their respective advanced AI language engines into more mass products like search.

Meta in May last year released large language model OPT-175B, also aimed at researchers, which formed the basis of a new iteration of its chatbot BlenderBot.

It later launched a model called Galactica, which it said could write scientific articles and solve math problems, but its demo was later pulled down because it repeatedly generated authoritative-sounding content.