Llama 2 is available for research and commercial use for free.
In a joint endeavor, tech giants Microsoft and Meta have unveiled an open-source, large language artificial intelligence (AI) model, Llama 2, which will be featured on Microsoft's Windows and Azure.
On July 18th, Microsoft and Meta announced their collaboration, confirming rumors suggesting Llama 2 was tailored for businesses and researchers to develop applications based on Meta's artificial intelligence technology.
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Upon the official announcement, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, took to Instagram to celebrate the new launch by noting:
<Llama 2> gives researchers and businesses access to build with our next generation large language model as the foundation of their work.
In their announcement, the partnering companies informed that Llama 2 has been optimized for Windows and is freely available for research and commercial use.
The statement by Meta revealed that Llama 2 was trained on 40% more publicly accessible online data sources, thus, providing double the context compared to its predecessor, Llama 1.
According to the firm, this new model outshines many open-source Large Language Models (LLMs), considering coding capabilities, proficiency, reasoning, and performance on knowledge tests.
Following the release of Llama 1's limited version in February, the demand surpassed Meta's expectations, with over 100,000 requests for access. However, despite the model being leaked online, the interest in Llama 1 was minimal compared to ChatGPT’s estimated 100 million users who signed up to use the model in the first three months.
Meta's move to open-source Llama has not been without controversy. Two US senators criticized the decision in June, expressing concerns that the "seemingly minimal" protections in the first version of Llama could potentially enable malicious users to engage in "criminal tasks."
The collaboration between Microsoft and Meta to launch the open-source AI model Llama 2 emphasizes the growing interest and investment in AI, along with the associated ethical considerations that these advancements necessitate.
