Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, has unveiled its latest large language model, Llama 3, and an image generator that updates pictures in real time. The company is racing to compete with generative AI market leader OpenAI.
The new models will be integrated into Meta’s virtual assistant, Meta AI, which the company claims is the most sophisticated among its competitors. Meta is positioning its AI assistant to directly challenge Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Visitors to the new Meta AI website can try out various features like creating a vacation packing list, playing music trivia, getting homework help, and even painting pictures of the New York City skyline. Meta is pushing to release generative AI products to its billions of users to catch up with OpenAI.
Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox stated that Llama 3 has new computer coding capabilities and has been trained with both images and text. Future versions of Llama 3 will be capable of generating both text and images, enhancing user experience.
Meta also announced a partnership with Google to include real-time search results in the assistant’s responses. The Meta AI assistant is expanding to more markets outside the U.S., including Australia, Canada, Singapore, Nigeria, and Pakistan.
Despite the impressive performance of Llama 3, developers have raised concerns about the model’s ability to understand context. Meta claims to have addressed these issues by using high-quality data and feeding more data into Llama 3 than its predecessor.
With the release of Llama 3 and the updated Meta AI assistant, Meta Platforms is making a significant push into the generative AI market, aiming to compete with industry leaders like OpenAI.