Meta releases AI tech to rival ChatGPT

by Rebecca Klar - 07/18/23 2:40 PM ET

FILE - A person stands in front of a Meta sign outside of the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Tuesday, March 7, 2023. Canada's government has announced on Wednesday July 5, that it will stop advertising on Facebook and Instagram in response to Meta’s decision to block access to news content on their social platforms as part of a temporary test. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File) — FILE – A person stands in front of a Meta sign outside of the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Tuesday, March 7, 2023. Canada’s government has announced on Wednesday July 5, that it will stop advertising on Facebook and Instagram in response to Meta’s decision to block access to news content on their social platforms as part of a temporary test. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

Tech giant Meta’s large language model will be available for free commercial and research use, rivaling OpenAI’s GPT-4 that powers the popular ChatGPT tool, the social media company said Tuesday.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is releasing its open source Llama 2 large language model, which can power artificial intelligence (AI) tools, in partnership with Microsoft.

“We believe an open approach is the right one for the development of today’s AI models, especially those in the generative space where the technology is rapidly advancing. By making AI models available openly, they can benefit everyone,” according to a Meta blog post.

Meta first announced its Llama 1 in February. The company said Tuesday it received more than 100,000 requests for access to it from researchers.

In addition to its partnership with Microsoft, Llama 2 will also be available through Amazon Web Services, Hugging Face and other providers.

Meta’s launch comes on the heels of the rising popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI chatbot, which is being powered by the GPT-4 language model.

Microsoft has also partnered closely with OpenAI. The company incorporated ChatGPT into its new version of its search engine Bing.

Meta said it is committed to “building responsibly” as it moves forward with its AI system. The company said its models have been tested internally, and the company has commissioned third parties to conduct external adversarial testing.

The company also released a research paper along with the announcement that disclosed “known challenges and issues” experienced and “provides insight into mitigations taken and future ones we intend to explore.”