Meta launches Llama 2 amid a new ChatGPT competitor

• Meta has created an AI system called Llama 2 that competes with ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
• Microsoft will play a significant role in the distribution of Llama 2 through its Azure cloud service.
• Llama 2 was trained using publicly available data, excluding Meta’s own products or services.

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, has created an AI system called Llama 2, which competes with ChatGPT and Google’s Bard and will be offered for free.

By releasing Llama 2 for free, Meta enables startups and businesses to compete with Chat GPT and Google’s Bard at a reduced expense. Microsoft will play a significant role in the distribution of Llama 2 through its Azure cloud service, being referred to as Meta’s “preferred partner” for the release.

Llama 2 is a component of Meta’s large language model (LLM) series, serving as the foundation for generative AI products like ChatGPT.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, revealed that the technology would be accessible for both research and commercial purposes, highlighting the company’s dedication to openness and innovation.

Meta seeks to distinguish itself from other tech giants by adopting a more transparent approach to sharing data and code used to develop AI systems. Zuckerberg believes that open-source models foster innovation and enhance safety and security. In line with this vision, Meta has open-sourced Llama 2 and emphasized its track record of making AI work accessible, such as with the widely used machine-learning framework PyTorch.

Nevertheless, the research paper introducing Llama 2 lacks the same level of transparency as Meta’s previous work, as it does not provide specific details about the data used for training. The model was trained using publicly available data, excluding Meta’s own products or services. It is worth mentioning that data from websites with substantial personal information was excluded from the training process.

Meta will offer its AI models for download either directly or through Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. The financial details of the partnership were not disclosed, but Meta assured that the models would also be accessible through other platforms like Amazon Web Services and Hugging Face. Despite being labeled as a “preferred” partner, it’s important to note that Microsoft is a significant funder and partner of OpenAI, the organization behind ChatGPT.

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During its Inspire event, Microsoft disclosed that it would impose a monthly fee of $30 per user for its generative AI tool, Microsoft 365 Copilot, in addition to the Llama 2 announcement.