Meta Platforms Inc. on Wednesday unveiled Muse Spark, the first artificial intelligence model developed by a team it spent heavily on building last year to catch up with rivals in the AI race. U.S. tech giants are under pressure to prove that their huge investments in artificial intelligence are paying off. For Meta, the stakes are especially high: The company last year hired Scale AI CEO Alex Wang in a $14.3 billion deal and offered hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation packages for some of the engineers on its newly formed superintelligence team.
The Muse Spark is the first in a new series of models from the team, which is working on developing machines with intelligence beyond that of humans.
The model will initially be available only in Meta AI applications and websites with low usage, and will replace the existing Llama model that currently supports WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and the chat function of the Meta series of smart glasses in the next few weeks.
"This initial model is designed to be lightweight, fast, and powerful enough to reason about complex problems in science, mathematics, and health," the company said in a blog post. "It is a powerful foundational model, and next-generation products are already in development."
Meta did not disclose the number of parameters of the model - a key indicator for comparing the computing power of artificial intelligence systems. The Muse Spark is part of a model line internally codenamed “Avocado”.
The model can assist users with multiple tasks, such as estimating the calories of a meal from a photo, or overlaying an image of a cup onto a shelf to preview the placement, and some competing products already have similar functions.
Meta also launched a contemplating mode, which can run multiple AI agents in parallel to improve reasoning capabilities, allowing Muse Spark to implement deep thinking modes similar to Google Gemini Deep Think and OpenAI GPT Pro.
The company is betting that applying ultra-smart technology to everyday personal tasks will help reach the more than 3.5 billion users of its social media platforms, potentially giving it an edge over rivals with smaller user bases.