Meta unveils first AI model from costly superintelligence team
· CNA · JoinRead a summary of this article on FAST.
Get bite-sized news via a new
cards interface. Give it a try.
Click here to return to FAST Tap here to return to FAST
FAST
April 8 : Meta Platforms on Wednesday unveiled Muse Spark, the first artificial intelligence model from a costly team it assembled last year to catch up with rivals in the AI race.
Shares of the company extended gains to trade up nearly 7 per cent.
U.S. tech giants are under pressure to prove their massive AI outlays will pay off. The stakes are especially high for Meta after it hired Scale AI CEO Alex Wang last year under a $14.3 billion deal and offered some engineers pay packages of hundreds of millions of dollars to staff a new superintelligence team.
Superintelligence refers to AI machines that could outthink humans. Muse Spark is the first in a new series of models from that team, and is part of a family of models known internally as Avocado.
CNA Games
Guess Word
Crack the word, one row at a time
Buzzword
Create words using the given letters
Mini Sudoku
Tiny puzzle, mighty brain teaser
Mini Crossword
Small grid, big challenge
Word Search
Spot as many words as you can
Show More
Show Less
The model will initially be available only on the lightly-used Meta AI app and website, and in the coming weeks, replace the existing Llama models powering chatbots on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Meta's collection of smart glasses.
"This initial model is small and fast by design, yet capable enough to reason through complex questions in science, math, and health. It is a powerful foundation, and the next generation is already in development," the company said in a blog post.
It did not disclose the model's size, a key measure typically used to compare an AI system's computing power with rivals.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had tempered expectations for performance, telling investors in January that he thought the team's first models "will be good but, more importantly, will show the rapid trajectory that we're on."
"I expect us to steadily push the frontier over the course of the year as we continue to release new models," he had said.
FOCUS ON EVERYDAY TASKS
Muse Spark can help users with tasks such as estimating the calories in a meal from a photo or superimposing an image of a mug on a shelf to see how it looks.
Meta also released Contemplating mode, which runs multiple AI agents in parallel to boost reasoning power, allowing Muse Spark to take on the extended thinking modes of Google's Gemini Deep Think and OpenAI's GPT Pro.
The company is betting that applying superintelligence to everyday personal tasks will help it tap its more than 3.5 billion users across its social media platforms, potentially giving it an edge over rivals with a smaller reach.
Newsletter
Week in Review
Subscribe to our Chief Editor’s Week in Review
Our chief editor shares analysis and picks of the week's biggest news every Saturday.
Sign up for our newsletters
Get our pick of top stories and thought-provoking articles in your inbox
Get the CNA app
Stay updated with notifications for breaking news and our best stories
Get WhatsApp alerts
Join our channel for the top reads for the day on your preferred chat app