After its launch in February this year, Llama 1 received over 100,000 requests for access. The next version, Llama 2, will be available free of charge for both research and commercial use.

Meta announced the news during Microsoft’s Inspire event where it also announced plans to integrate their AI tools into Microsoft’s 360 platform.

“We believe an open approach is the right one for the development of today’s AI models, especially those in the generative space where the technology is rapidly advancing,” read Meta’s press release. 

“We believe it’s safer. Opening access to today’s AI models means a generation of developers and researchers can stress test them, identifying and solving problems fast, as a community. By seeing how these tools are used by others, our own teams can learn from them, improve those tools, and fix vulnerabilities.”

Azure customers will be able to deploy Llama 2 in three sizes: 7B, 13B, and 70B. The AI models will also be optimised to run locally on Windows. 

Unlike OpenAI’s ChatGPT which can be used in a web browser, Llama 2 needs to be downloaded from one of Meta’s launch partners Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, or Hugging Face. 

According to a research paper by Meta, Llama 2 falls behind GPT-4 in terms of performance. However, where Llama 2 falls behind in performance, it apparently makes up in customisability, allowing customers to create more sophisticated products.

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This model was trained on 40% more data than its predecessor, Llama1, according to Meta. The LLM was trained on both data scraped online and by feedback from human annotators. Meta has also disclosed that no Meta user data was used to train Llama 2. 

The new models have also undergone red-teaming exercises and external adversarial testing to address potential risks. Meta has also created a Responsible Use Guide and an Acceptable Use Policy to provide developers with best practices and prohibit certain use cases that may be unfair or irresponsible.

Meta is launching the Llama Impact Challenge, which encourages public, non-profit, and for-profit organisations to use Llama 2 to address challenges in areas like the environment and education.