Meta on Thursday unveiled a new version of its flagship artificial intelligence model, Muse Spark, in an effort to close the gap with its rivals in the global race to develop the technology.<\/p>\n
For the first time, the company will offer a paid version of the service, a departure from its longtime philosophy of giving its A.I. away for free. The paid product opens up a new revenue stream for Meta, which is planning to spend tens of billions of dollars on A.I. this year.<\/p>\n
The new model is better at coding than Meta\u2019s previous version of the technology, which the company released in April<\/a>. On tests that measure writing, reasoning, coding and other tasks, Muse Spark performed at or near the same levels as leading models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and xAI, according to data shared by the company.<\/p>\n Meta\u2019s product would also be cheaper than other leading models, the company said. Muse Spark costs customers about a fourth what Anthropic\u2019s leading model, Fable, does.<\/p>\n Muse Spark is the first A.I. model developed by Meta Superintelligence Labs, the company\u2019s A.I. division that Mark Zuckerberg, Meta\u2019s chief executive, revamped last year. Along with spending billions on new A.I. researchers to develop models like Muse Spark, Mr. Zuckerberg has pledged to spend $600 billion to build new data centers in the coming years.<\/p>\n