Meta’s CEO Talks Llama 4, Meta AI Usage Surge And More

As the interest in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) continues to grow, artificial intelligence (AI) companies are shifting their focus more on integrating AI technology into their products and services.

This includes social networking leader Meta, which recently released its latest generative AI model, the new and improved open-source Llama 3.1 70B and 8B models. This came as the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg reiterated his belief that open source is better for developers, for Meta and for the world more broadly.

Following this, Meta also rolled out its AI Studio, beginning with the United States.

Soon after, it released its Meta Segment Anything Model 2 AKA SAM 2, which added the capability of segmenting any object in an image or video.

Now, the company has revealed details about its plans going forward, including requirements for the next generation of its Llama family of models.

So, what did Meta reveal about its future moves and upcoming AI models? Let’s explore!
 

What Did Meta Say About Its Future Meta AI Models?

 

• Recently, Meta conducted its second quarter 2024 earnings call, in which various executives of the company spoke about the performance of the company and its future plans. 

• Among these was Mark Zuckerberg, whose comments were focused on Meta’s AI plans going forward.

• His comments were focused around three key areas; what AI means for Meta’s family of apps and core business, what new AI experiences and opportunities are and how AI is shaping its metaverse work.

• He also mentioned that the driving force behind the increased use of AI on Meta’s products is its Llama family of foundation models, which recently saw the release of Llama 3.1.

• This release consisted of the first frontier-level open-source model, along with new and industry-leading small and medium-sized models.

• Speaking about the company’s stance on open-sourcing its models, Zuckerberg said, “I often get asked why I'm so bullish on open source. I wrote a letter along with the Llama 3.1 release explaining why I believe that open source is better for developers, for Meta and for the world more broadly.”

• “My view is that open source will be safer, will enable innovation that improves all of our lives faster, and will also create more shared prosperity.”

• As such, the company is also focusing on implementing the right level of infrastructure capacity to support training more and more advanced models.

• Llama 3 is already competing at the top level and Meta’s aim with the next generation of Llama, i.e. Llama 4, is to be the most advanced in the industry next year.

• According to the CEO, “The amount of compute needed to train Llama 4 will likely be almost 10x more than what we used to train Llama 3 -- and future models will continue to grow beyond that.”

• While predicting the exact infrastructure requirements for future models is tough, Zuckerberg said he’d rather risk building capacity before it’s needed, rather than when it’s too late.

• This becomes important considering the time taken to build new infrastructure projects and for model development, while Meta AI's usage has been growing.

 

What Did Meta Say About Meta AI’s Usage?

 

• As per Meta’s Q2 2024 report, over 3.2 billion people use at least one of its apps each day (WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, Threads and Meta Business Suite), the company is enjoying year-over-year growth.

• A major contributor to this is the advances Meta made in AI, which helped improve the quality of recommendations and drive engagement across Facebook and Instagram.

• Meta AI has been used for billions of queries since it was launched, with its availability on WhatsApp fostering increased retention and engagement.

• Furthermore, India has become Meta AI’s largest market, thanks to its more than 500 million users.

• At the same time, Meta’s AI integrations have led to the company seeing its Ray-Ban Meta glasses and Quest 3 sales do better than its expectations.

• Meta AI is also helping grow advertising on its platform, as enhanced services are offering advertisers better control to deliver successful campaigns.

Concluding his opening session, Mark Zuckerberg said, “The progress we're making on both the foundational technology and product experiences suggests that we're on the right track. I'm proud of what our team has accomplished so far and I'm optimistic about our ability to execute on the opportunities ahead.”

Do you think Meta’s open-source stance for AI models will help grow its market share? Seeing how Meta AI is enhancing results for the company, do you think other companies should adopt similar styles?

Let us know in the comments below!