(San Francisco) Meta opened its Llama 2 language model free of charge in “open source” (free access to the programming code) on Tuesday to companies and researchers, a strategic decision which brings the giant of social networks back in the race to generative artificial intelligence.
Llama 2, a competitor of GPT-4 – at work in ChatGPT and Bing, Microsoft’s search engine – will be available in particular via the main platforms of clouds (remote computing), Azure (Microsoft) and AWS (Amazon).
“By making artificial intelligence (AI) models widely available, they can benefit everyone […] and we believe it is safer,” Meta said in a statement.
The launch of ChatGPT late last year by OpenAI and its immediate success launched a frantic race for generative AI, capable of answering questions in everyday language and generating all kinds of text.
Microsoft, OpenAI’s main investor, and Google dominate this sector, but most tech giants are also massively committed to the latest generation of AI, despite controversies around the mistakes it makes and the potential dangers.
“Giving to companies, start-upentrepreneurs and researchers access to tools that they would struggle to build themselves on this scale, with computing capabilities that they would not otherwise have access to, will open up a world of opportunities for them to experiment and innovate,” says Meta.
The parent company of Facebook and Instagram made the announcement during a marketing event for Microsoft, its “main partner for Llama 2”.
The Windows firm thus also takes a position on the side of open source AI, the operation of which is deemed to be less opaque, more transparent than that of other AIs.
The American group also revealed that Copilot, its new flagship tool for its Microsoft 365 office suite, which puts the spotlight on AI, would cost $30 per month per user.
Copilot “puts thousands of skills at your service,” the company promises. This virtual assistant transcribes meetings, offers summaries and above all has access to emails, calendar, contacts and documents to write texts and perform tasks on request.
“We believe that within three years, more than 50% of Microsoft’s user base will be using the company’s game-changing enterprise AI,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.
The AI market in the cloudsaccording to Dan Ives, could increase annual cloud computing revenue by 20% by 2025.