NEW YORK, Aug 29 (Reuters) – Social media giant Meta's (META.O) Llama artificial intelligence models are used by companies including Goldman Sachs (GS.N) and AT&T (TN) for business functions such as customer service, document review and computer code generation, the company said in a statement on Thursday. The mostly free Llama models have been downloaded about 350 million times since Meta began publicly releasing them last year, up from the 300 million downloads it announced in late July when it released its latest, largest version of the Llama 3 model.
Usage via cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure is also on the rise, more than doubling between May and July of this year, Mehta said.
The announcement comes as Meta and other tech companies pouring billions of dollars into AI face questions from investors about how widespread AI is and what kind of return they can expect on their investment.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg argues that building cutting-edge AI models and offering them for free is the best way to avoid being limited by competitors' closed technologies.
“Llama's path to becoming the industry standard is to be consistently competitive, efficient and open for generations to come,” Zuckerberg wrote last month.
While large-scale language models like Llama have dazzled users with their ability to generate human-like sentences on command, they still struggle with certain logical tasks and are prone to factual errors, limiting their adoption in business environments.
Still, Meta pointed to several large companies adopting the Llama model as evidence of its usefulness and its competitiveness against paid alternatives, such as those from industry leader OpenAI.
Other companies using Llama include Japanese bank Nomura Holdings Inc (8604.T), opens in a new tab, food delivery service DoorDash Inc (DASH.O), opens in a new tab and professional services provider Accenture Inc (ACN.N), opens in a new tab, according to the company.
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Reporting by Katie Paul in New York; Editing by Mark Potter
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