Meta Unveils ‘Open Source’ Version of Its Most Powerful A.I. Model

Last month, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, boldly came out in support of “open source” artificial intelligence models that are publicly available to download and modify without payment or approval. The way forward, he said, was through “openness and putting the power of tech into more people’s hands, not fewer.”

On Monday, Mr. Zuckerberg doubled down on that support.

Meta released an open-source version of its most powerful A.I. model, Muse Spark. Called Muse Glimmer, it is nearly identical to Muse Spark and can generate code, text and images. Muse Spark, which debuted in July as a “closed” A.I. model that people pay to access, will remain closed.

The new open-source model was accompanied by a 14-page essay from Mr. Zuckerberg laying out his vision for A.I. The technology should not be feared, he said, and the United States needs to retain its primacy over China in the A.I. race. Without naming Anthropic and OpenAI, the rival A.I. companies that have called for tight controls on the technology, he criticized their approaches, saying that concentrating A.I. power in the hands of just a few companies was hazardous.

“Rather than centralizing superintelligence, we should distribute it,” Mr. Zuckerberg, 42, wrote in the essay, which he titled “The Future is for Everyone.” He added, “This has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment.”

Meta’s new model is likely to add to a contentious Silicon Valley debate over the direction of A.I. development. Anthropic and OpenAI have argued that A.I. should be restricted because it is dangerous and needs to be safely developed in a contained fashion. But Meta, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google and others have backed open-source, saying the technology must be freely available so that people can further develop A.I. and build new businesses.

The debate was turbocharged last month when Chinese start-ups released powerful open-source A.I. models that appeared to threaten the technological edge held by U.S. companies. Officials in Washington became embroiled in the debate, with OpenAI and Anthropic raising concerns about Chinese open-source A.I. models with regulators, while Nvidia and others pushed against restrictions.

(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news articles. The two companies have denied the claims.)

Meta has long supported open-source A.I. and was for years one of the few American tech giants to give away its top A.I. models for free. That changed last spring, after Meta fell behind Anthropic and OpenAI in the A.I. race. It began developing a closed A.I. model instead.

That model, Muse Spark, was developed under Alexandr Wang, 29, an A.I. entrepreneur who Meta hired last year to be its chief A.I. officer. The company began selling access to Muse Spark for the first time last month. Last week, Meta also released Muse Code, a stand-alone coding ***istant powered by Muse Spark.

Muse Spark does not perform as well as leading A.I. models from Anthropic and OpenAI on measures such as coding, reasoning and writing, according to leaderboards that track A.I. benchmarks. Meta has positioned the model as a cheaper alternative to its rivals.

That strategy is similar to Chinese A.I. companies and their inexpensive open-source models. The Chinese models have become increasingly popular in the United States as companies seek to cut their A.I. bills, as well as in developing nations such as Kenya and Uganda.

In his essay, Mr. Zuckerberg also expanded on Meta’s vision for superintelligence, which includes giving people personal “agents,” the A.I. bots that can “work 24/7 on your behalf to improve your relationships, health, career, finances, home management, hobbies, and more.”

His eight-year-old daughter has been using A.I. to code and create videos, he added, and he is using A.I. with her to design a robot. “Everyone will soon have invention superpowers,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.

China has advantages in the A.I. race, Mr. Zuckerberg added, such as the ability to build data centers and nuclear power facilities quickly and with fewer regulations. He called for a new process for government oversight of A.I. development, and defended distillation, a practice in which A.I. labs use rival models to help train their own.

In the coming months, Meta plans to release a new cutting-edge A.I. model, internally called Watermelon, that will be more powerful than Muse Spark. Mr. Zuckerberg did not say if the model would be open or closed.