Meta challenges ChatGPT by open-sourcing its powerful AI, LLaMA 2

Microsoft just held its Inspire event, where the company announced AI-related products and partnerships. At the event, Meta revealed its partnership with Microsoft which will make Meta’s large language model (LLM) free for the public and researchers.

As stated in Meta’s blog, Meta is expanding its partnership with Microsoft by making the Redmond-based firm the preferred partner for its LLM (Llama 2). As Microsoft notes in its own blog, Llama 2 will be supported on Azure and Windows. It was also revealed that Qualcomm is working with Meta to bring Llama 2 to phones, laptops, and headsets starting in 2024 for AI-powered apps that don’t rely on cloud services.

The largest companies in the tech industry have spent the year warning that the development of artificial intelligence technology is outpacing their wildest expectations and that they need to limit who has access to it. Mark Zuckerberg is doubling down on a different tack: He’s giving it away.

Meta claims it decided to go open source with Llama 2 to give businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, and researchers access to more tools. These tools would open up “opportunities for them to experiment, innovate in exciting ways, and ultimately benefit from economically and socially.”

According to the press release, it appears Meta believes opening up access to its AI makes it safer. It notes that developers and researchers will be able to stress test the LLM, which will help in identifying and solving problems faster.

The company further explains that Llama 2 has been “red-teamed” — tested and fine-tuned for safety by having internal and external teams “generate adversarial prompts.” Meta adds that it will “continue to invest in safety through fine-tuning and benchmarking” the model.

Llama 2 is available starting today in the Azure AI model catalog and is optimized to work on Windows locally. However, it will also be available through Amazon Web Services (AWS), Hugging Face, and other providers.