Meta makes Llama AI models available to US government agencies
Meta announced Monday that its Llama artificial intelligence (AI) models will be available to U.S. government agencies and contractors. The announcement came just days after reports claimed the company’s open-source AI models were being used by researchers in China for military use. The social media giant emphasized that it will also make its Llama models available to U.S. entities working on defense and national security applications, as well as private sector partners supporting their work.
In a newsroom afterMeta confirmed that it has made Llama available directly to US government agencies and to all allied entities working with the country’s government. The company is also working with private companies such as Accenture Federal Services, Amazon Web Services, Anduril, Booz Allen, Databricks, Deloitte, IBM, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Oracle, Palantir, Scale AI and Snowflake to bring Llama to government agencies.
The company highlighted how Meta’s AI models are helping the US government through private companies and cited several examples. It says Oracle is building on Llama to synthesize aircraft maintenance documents. This is said to help the company diagnose problems quickly and accurately, speed up repair time and more.
Similarly, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure host Meta’s AI models on their cloud servers to build solutions for sensitive data, the company said. IBM’s WatsonX would also bring Llama to national security agencies through their self-managed data centers.
Meta said large language models (LLMs) can support many aspects of U.S. security and national security because of their ability to process large amounts of data and generate insights. Citing more use cases, the social media giant said LLMs can also help streamline logistics and planning, detect terrorist financing and strengthen cyber defenses.
“Open source systems have helped accelerate defense research and high-end computing, identify security vulnerabilities, and improve communications between disparate systems,” the report said.
Notably, the announcement comes after Reuters reported that Chinese research institutions associated with the People’s Liberation Army used the open-source Llama AI models to develop a tool that could potentially be put to military use.
