Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivers a speech during the annual Meta Connect event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, September 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Meta is launching its first major artificial intelligence model since the expensive hire of Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang nine months ago, as Facebook’s parent company aims to carve out a niche in a market dominated by OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.
Nicknamed Muse Spark and originally named Lawyerthe AI model announced Wednesday is the first in the company’s new Muse series developed by Meta-superintelligence laboratoriesthe AI unit that Wang oversees. Wang joined Meta in June as part of the $14.3 billion investment in Scale AIof which he was CEO.
Meta is desperate to regain momentum in the highly competitive AI market following the disappointing start of its latest open source models last April. Post failed captivate developersleading CEO Mark Zuckerberg to pivot its strategy.
“Over the past nine months, Meta Superintelligence Labs has rebuilt our AI stack from the ground up, progressing faster than any development cycle we have run before,” Meta said in a statement. blog post Wednesday. “This initial model is small and fast by design, but capable enough to reason about complex questions in science, math and health. This is a powerful foundation and the next generation is already in development.”
Meta does not position Muse Spark as a high-end model, but rather highlights its efficiency and “competitive performance” on various tasks.
The new Muse Spark will be proprietary, instead of open source, with the company saying there is “hope to make future versions of the model open source.” The company had adopted an open source approach to AI with its Lama model family.
Meta said in a technical blog about the new model that has improved AI training techniques as well as rebuilt technology infrastructure has allowed the company to create smaller AI models that perform as well as its older mid-sized variant Llama 4 for “an order of magnitude less computation.”
“Muse Spark delivers competitive performance in multimodal perception, reasoning, health, and agent tasks,” Meta said in the post. “We continue to invest in areas that currently have performance gaps, particularly long-term agent systems and coding workflows. »
Meta is also experimenting with a new AI model revenue stream by offering third-party developers access to Muse Spark’s underlying technology via an API. Currently, only unspecified “select partners” can access the “private API preview” of the AI model, but Meta said it plans to offer paid access to the API to a wider audience in the future.
The new model now powers the company’s digital assistant in the standalone Meta AI app and desktop website. Muse Spark will debut in the coming weeks on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, as well as in the company’s Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. Meta also anticipates that Muse Spark could ultimately power the company’s engine. Vibes AI video feature in the Meta AI app. This service currently uses AI models from third parties like Black Forest Labs.
With Muse Spark, users of the standalone Meta AI app and associated websites will now be able to alternate between certain modes depending on the sophistication of their prompts. Users can use one mode for quick answers to simple questions and another for more complex queries related to tasks like analyzing legal documents or gleaning nutritional information from photos of grocery items.
The reworked Meta-AI with Muse Spark will also contain a Shopping mode that the company says can help people buy clothes or decorate rooms.
“Shopping mode draws on the style inspiration and brand storytelling already present in our apps, bringing out ideas from creators and the communities people already follow,” Meta’s blog says.
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