Over the past year, Meta has become an AI success story thanks to its decision to offer robust AI models for free. Last week, the company launched a powerful version of its large Llama language model, giving developers, researchers, and startups free access to a model comparable to the powerful paid model behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The company says all of its new chatbots are based on the latest version of Llama.
And yet, Meta has struggled to find the right tone and niche for its own AI offerings. Last September, the company launched a range of AI chatbots loosely based on real celebrities. Among them was a dungeon master fantasy roleplaying bot based on Snoop Dogg; a witty sports bot based on Tom Brady; and an everyday companion inspired by Kendall Jenner.
However, these robots were not very successful and Meta retired them. Jon Carvill, a spokesman for Meta, said the company had learned from previous experiments. “AI Studio is an evolution,” he said.
There is plenty of evidence that users may find fully customizable bots more engaging. A company called AI CharacterFounded by several former Google employees who helped make advances in AI, it has attracted millions of users to its own custom chatbots.
Zuckerberg also touted other new open-source AI advancements from Meta at SIGGRAPH. The company has developed a new tool for identifying image and video content called Segment Anything Model (SAM) 2. The older version is widely used for image analysis. Meta says SAM 2 could be used to more efficiently analyze video content, for example.
Earlier in the day, in an onstage interview with WIRED’s Lauren Goode, NVIDIA CEO Huang said he would “absolutely” want a “Jensen AI” that knows everything he’s ever said, written, and done. “You’ll be able to prod it, and hopefully it will say something intelligent,” he said. It could force stock analysts to bombard the bot (instead of him) with questions about the company. “That’s the first thing that has to go,” he said, laughing.