Meta’s new AI launch
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicts that Meta AI will be the most widely used assistant by the end of this year, surpassing ChatGPT and all other leading AI providers.
This week Meta announced that its AI-powered assistant can now speak in more languages and also create stylised selfies thanks to a flagship Meta AI model update, the catchily named ‘Llama 3.1 405B’.
This latest Meta AI update means that users of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp can now interact with Meta AI in more creative ways than ever before. Llama 3.1 Is the first open-source model and Meta says it is smarter, has better reasoning, and is more advanced than any other AI tool available.
What is Imagine Me?
Have you ever dreamed of being a superhero, a rockstar or a professional athlete? Imagine Me is a prompt that can be used to transform an uploaded image that can be shared across social media freely. This new feature is first rolling out as a beta in the United States but will hit UK shores over the next few weeks.
Meta explains:
“Imagine Me creates images based on a photo of you and a prompt like ‘Imagine me surfing’ or ‘Imagine me on a beach vacation’ using our new state-of-the-art personalisation model. Simply type “Imagine me” in your Meta AI chat to get started, and then you can add a prompt like “Imagine me as royalty” or “Imagine me in a surrealist painting.” From there, you can share the images with friends and family, giving you the perfect response or funny sidebar to entertain your group chat.”
The company sees demand for people wanting to create more kinds of AI media and share it to their feeds, even if that means blurring the line between what is real and what is not. Whilst this throws up all manner of ethical and online security questions, the excitement which follows this latest update will be felt keenly across younger generations specifically, of this we have no doubt.
Llama 3.1 is vastly more complex than previous Llama 3 models and whilst Meta hasn’t disclosed the cost of developing Llama 3.1, it would be a fair guess to say that it was hundreds of millions of dollars. Even with how overhyped AI can already sometimes feel, it’s clear that Meta believes that this is just the start of the race.
So given the astronomical cost, some might wonder why Zuckerberg is enabling the use of this superpowered AI tool free of charge? The answer is simple – Meta believes that open-source AI is the future, and the race to be the best open-source AI provider is on.
