Meta’s language-centric LlaMA AI will soon find itself in the company of a nerdier, coding wiz brother. The company’s next AI release will reportedly be a big coding machine meant to compete against the proprietary software from the likes of OpenAI and Google. The model could see a release as soon as next week.
According to The Information who spoke to two anonymous sources with direct knowledge of the AI, this new model dubbed “Code Llama” will be open source and available free online. This is consistent with the company’s strategy so far of releasing widely available AI software that makes developing new customizable AI models much easier for companies who don’t want to pay OpenAI or others for the privilege.
The system is based on the Llama language model, and according to The Information, it will suggest code to developers automatically as they type. What this means in practice is to be seen, but any such feature would give it legs to stand against the other premium coding AI software that’s hit the market recently. Gizmodo reached out to Meta for comment, but we did not immediately hear back.
The company’s latest large language model, LlaMA 2, was developed in partnership with Microsoft. The company claimed the model was trained on 40% more text content than its previous rendition. The AI has caught the attention of copyright holders, including comedian Sarah Silverman, who sued the company claiming Meta trained its AI on copyrighted books.
OpenAI has touted the coding abilities of its services like ChatGPT through the beta Code Interpreter plugin, but it also has its own Codex model used for text-to-coding generation. Similarly, Google has allowed its Bard chatbot to generate code in about 20 different programming languages.
Microsoft also has Codex-powered AI installed in its GitHub coding repository. Microsoft has proclaimed the vast majority of programmers already use AI in their coding activities. Microsoft is also in the crosshairs of lawsuits claiming the company stole the plaintiff’s code to create its AI tool.
Compared to the other big AI developers, Meta’s open source strategy has gained clout despite its belated entry into the consumer-end AI race. Just this month, Meta open sourced its Audiocraft AI model. The model contained several of Meta’s audio-based AI, including MusicGen and AudioGen. Just this year, in addition to its open source language model, Meta also released a deepfake-generator Voicebox AI amid a suite of other, smaller AI-based tools.
Though Meta is still Meta, the company isn’t just creating AI tools for the betterment of unknown developers. The company has been trying to find ways to implement AI into its other products such as its social media platforms including Facebook. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has even talked about shoving AI into its lame-duck metaverse ambitions. And if nothing else, putting out open source AI tools has the potential to undermine its competitors while Meta focuses on maintaining its advertising dominance.
