Llama 2 vs. ChatGPT: Meta’s Challenge to OpenAI’s Dominance
Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, has unveiled its new artificial intelligence system called Llama 2, which directly competes with ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. However, Meta’s unique approach is that it will offer Llama 2 for free, providing startups and businesses with a cost-effective alternative to existing chatbot solutions. Microsoft has been selected as the preferred partner for distributing Llama 2 through its Azure cloud service.
Llama 2 is part of Meta’s large language model (LLM) series, which serves as the foundation for generative AI products like ChatGPT. Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, emphasized the company’s commitment to openness and innovation by making Llama 2 available for both research and commercial use. Meta has a history of promoting transparency and open-source initiatives, including its widely adopted machine-learning framework, PyTorch.
However, the research paper introducing Llama 2 lacks transparency compared to Meta’s previous work, omitting specific details about the training data. The model was trained on publicly available data, excluding Meta’s own products or services. Importantly, any data containing significant personal information was removed to prioritize user privacy.
Meta will allow direct downloads of its AI models and provide access to them through various platforms, including Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, Amazon Web Services, and Hugging Face. While Microsoft is labeled as a preferred partner, it’s worth noting that Microsoft is also a major funder and partner of OpenAI, the organization behind ChatGPT.
Additionally, Microsoft announced at its Inspire event that it would introduce a monthly fee of $30 per user for its generative AI tool, Microsoft 365 Copilot, targeting businesses in need of such solutions.
