April 8 (Reuters) – Meta Platforms on Wednesday unveiled Muse Spark, the first artificial intelligence model from a team it assembled last year through a costly talent war and sweeping internal restructuring to catch up with rivals in the AI race.
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.
Muse Spark is the first in a new series of models from that team, which is pursuing machines that can outthink humans.
It 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.
(Reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru and Katie Paul in New York; Editing by Leroy Leo)