Meta releases open-source Llama 3, adds AI chatbot to social platforms

Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta has upped the AI game with the launch of the next version of his company's foundational open-source AI model.

Claimed to be the most capable openly available large language model (LLM) to date, Llama 3 comes up with two variants -- 8B and 70B models that can support a broad range of use cases. Meta says they come with "improved reasoning" and set a new "state-of-the-art" for models of their sizes.

"Meta AI, built with Llama 3 technology, is now one of the world’s leading AI assistants that can boost your intelligence and lighten your load—helping you learn, get things done, create content, and connect to make the most out of every moment. You can try Meta AI here," says Meta.

Meta's AI game with peer companies like Google, Microsoft and OpenAI has taken an interesting turn as Meta's AI models are open-sourced contrary to others. "We believe these are the best open source models of their class, period."

Meta says it wants to kickstart the next wave of innovation in AI across the stack. "...from applications to developer tools to evals to inference optimisations and more."

With Llama 3, the company’s goal is to make Llama 3 "multilingual and multimodal", have longer context, and improve overall performance across core LLM capabilities such as reasoning and coding.

In terms of performance, Meta says Llama 3's 8B and 70B models can substantially reduce false refusal rates, improve alignment, and increase diversity in model responses. Plus, they have also shown "improved capabilities" like reasoning, code generation, and instruction following, thus making Llama 3 more steerable.

According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Llama 3 is the "most intelligent AI assistant", and since it’s open-source, users can use it freely.

Llama 3 will soon be available on all major platforms including cloud providers, and model API providers, says Meta. As a next goal, it plans to launch its largest models spanning 400B parameters. "These models are still training, our team is excited about how they’re trending."

Meta has said its AI Assistant, which was launched in September last year, is now built on Llama 3 technology. "Meta AI is one of the world’s leading AI assistants, already on your phone, in your pocket for free," says Meta. The company says one can use Meta AI on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger to get things done, learn, create and connect. Meta AI will now be available in English in more than a dozen countries outside of the US. Meta AI, however, is yet to be launched in India.

Meta's AI chatbot works almost the same way as others in the game, though the advantage for Meta is it's linked with the company's social apps. From real-time recommendations to generating photos, and solving a problem to searching real-time information, Meta says its AI Assistant can do it all and can be accessed in the user's feed.

Amid a lot of uncertainty over the AI progress in the industry, Meta has said it is developing Llama 3 in a “responsible way”. “We’re offering various resources to help others use them responsibly as well. This includes introducing new trust and safety tools with Llama Guard 2, Code Shield, and CyberSec Eval 2.”