Meta’s Llama artificial intelligence (AI) models are being used by companies including Goldman Sachs and AT&T for business functions such as customer service, document review and computer code generation, the social media giant said in a statement on Thursday.
The Llama models, which are largely free, have been downloaded nearly 350 million times since Meta began making them public last year. That’s up from the 300 million downloads the company announced when it released the largest version of its latest Llama 3 model in late July.
Usage via cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure has also increased, more than doubling between May and July of this year, according to Meta.
The announcement comes after Meta and other tech companies investing billions in AI faced questions from investors about how widespread adoption of the technology appears to be and what kind of return they can expect for their spending.
According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the best way for a company to avoid being limited by a competitor’s proprietary technology is to build advanced AI models and give them away for free.
“The way Llama can become the industry standard is by being consistently competitive, efficient, and open generation after generation,” Zuckerberg wrote last month.
While large language models like Llama amaze users with their ability to generate human-like prose on command, they still struggle with certain logic tasks and are prone to factual errors, making them poorly applicable in business contexts.
Still, Meta pointed to a handful of large companies experimenting with Llama models, as evidence of their utility and confirmation of their competitiveness compared to paid alternatives, such as models from market leader OpenAI.
Other companies the company says are using Llama include Japanese bank Nomura Holdings, food delivery service DoorDash and professional services firm Accenture.
© Thomson Reuters 2024
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