Tech companies, banks using Llama AI models – Meta

• Published On: 29 August 2024 at 18:26

Major corporations, including Goldman Sachs and AT&T, are increasingly using Meta's Llama artificial intelligence models for a variety of business applications, including customer service, document review, and code generation.

This information was revealed in a statement issued by the social media giant on Thursday.

Since Meta began publicly releasing Llama models last year, they have been downloaded nearly 350 million times, up from 300 million downloads in July when Meta unveiled the most recent version, Llama 3. This significant increase reflects the increasing interest in the models.

Meta also observed an increase in cloud-based usage, with deployments from providers such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure more than doubling between May and July of this year.

This announcement comes as investors question the widespread adoption of AI technologies and the expected returns on the significant investments made by tech companies. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized that making cutting-edge AI models available for free gives the company an advantage over competitors using proprietary technologies.

"The path for Llama to become the industry standard is by being consistently competitive, efficient, and open generation after generation," Zuckerberg said a few weeks ago.

Despite their impressive ability to generate human-like text, Llama models still struggle with certain logical tasks and are prone to factual inaccuracies, which may limit their use in some business contexts.

Meta cited several large enterprises that use Llama as examples of the models' utility and competitiveness compared to paid alternatives such as those from industry leader OpenAI.

In addition to Goldman Sachs and AT&T, Llama is used by Japanese bank Nomura Holdings, food delivery service DoorDash, and professional services firm Accenture.