Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook, has unveiled a cutting-edge AI model that CEO Mark Zuckerberg hailed as "state of the art", positioning it to compete with industry leaders OpenAI and Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.
Meta unveiled Llama 3.1, a next-generation AI model, on Tuesday, marking a significant upgrade from its predecessor, Llama 3, released in April. The development of Llama 3.1 required an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in computing power and several months of intensive training.
“I think the most important product for an AI assistant is going to be how smart it is,” Zuckerberg said during an interview on the Bloomberg Originals series. “The Llama models that we’re building are some of the most advanced in the world.” Meta is already working on Llama 4, Zuckerberg added.
According to Meta executives, the newly launched Llama 3.1 model boasts an array of advanced capabilities, including enhanced reasoning skills to tackle complex math problems and generate entire books of text in real-time. Additionally, the model features generative AI capabilities that enable image creation through text prompts. One notable feature, 'Imagine Yourself,' allows users to upload a photo of themselves and see it transformed into various scenarios and scenes, revolutionizing personalized content creation."
“It’s just gonna be this teacher that allows so many different organizations to create their own models rather than having to rely on the kind of off-the-shelf ones that the other guys are selling,” he said.
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Meta's Llama models serve as the foundation for its AI chatbot, Meta AI, which is integrated into popular apps like Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as a standalone web product. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta AI has already reached 'hundreds of millions' of users, with projections to become the world's most widely used chatbot by year's end. Additionally, Zuckerberg anticipates that external developers will leverage Llama to develop their own AI models, further expanding its reach and impact.
Meta's AI endeavors have come at a substantial cost, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealing that training the Llama 3 models required 'hundreds of millions of dollars' in computing power. However, he anticipates that future models will necessitate even greater investments, projecting costs in the 'billions and many billions of dollars' range. Despite Meta's efforts to streamline its spending on futuristic technologies and reduce management layers in 2023 - resulting in thousands of job cuts as part of the 'year of efficiency' initiative - Zuckerberg remains committed to investing heavily in the AI arms race.
Despite the substantial investment in Llama, Meta is making the underlying technology freely available to the public, provided they comply with the company's 'acceptable use policy'. By adopting an open-access approach, Zuckerberg aims to establish Meta's work as the basis for future startups and products, thereby increasing the company's influence on the direction of the industry. This strategic move enables Meta to shape the future of AI and cement its position as a leader in the field.
While Meta has committed to making Llama's technology openly available, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other top executives are maintaining the confidentiality of the data sets used to train Llama 3.1. Zuckerberg clarified that despite the open-access approach, the company is also leveraging Llama for its own purposes, saying, 'Even though it's open, we are designing this also for ourselves.' The training data sets comprise publicly available user posts from Facebook and Instagram, as well as proprietary data sets licensed from third-party sources, although specific details remain undisclosed.
In April, Meta informed investors that it would be increasing its expenditure by billions of dollars beyond initial projections for the year, with AI investments being a primary driver of this surge. A company blog post revealed that Meta plans to acquire approximately 350,000 Nvidia Corp. H100 GPUs by year's end. These H100 chips have emerged as the essential technology for training large language models, including Llama and OpenAI's ChatGPT, and come with a hefty price tag, reaching up to tens of thousands of dollars per unit.
Detractors of Meta's open-source AI strategy warn of potential misuse or the risk of adversarial nations like China leveraging Meta's technology to narrow the gap with American tech companies. However, Zuckerberg is more concerned that restricting access to the technology could ultimately be counterproductive. He also acknowledges that maintaining a significant lead in AI advancements over China is unrealistic, but suggests that even a modest, multi-month advantage can have a compounding effect over time, yielding a substantial benefit for the US.
