Facebook parent Meta makes public its ChatGPT rival Llama

Facebook parent company Meta Platforms has built an artificial intelligence system that rivals the likes of ChatGPT and Google's Bard but it's taking a different approach: releasing it for free. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday that the company is partnering with Microsoft to introduce the next generation of its AI large language model and making the technology, known as Llama 2, free for research and commercial use. Zuckerberg said people can download its new AI models directly or through a partnership that makes them available on Microsoft's cloud platform Azure “along with Microsoft’s safety and content tools.” The financial terms of that partnership were not disclosed. While Microsoft is described by Meta as a “preferred” partner, Meta said the models will also be available through Amazon Web Services, which is Microsoft's main cloud rival, as well as AI startup Hugging Face and others. Microsoft said in a separate statement that the two companies “share a commitment to democratizing AI and its benefits and we are excited that Meta is taking an open approach.” Meta already is a customer of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform.