In a strategic push to strengthen its foothold in the generative AI space, Meta released the first models from its latest open-source AI suite, Llama 4, on Saturday. Meta introduced three AI models: Llama 4 Maverick, Llama 4 Scout and Llama 4 Behemoth, but only two are currently available. The newest AI models are being seen by many as direct competition to Google's own AI offerings, particularly Gemini. Amid this, Google CEO Sundar Pichai surprised Meta AI with a congratulatory message on X.
His post read, "Never a dull day in the AI world! Congrats to the Llama 4 team, Onwards!" Ahmad Al-Dale, Meta's head of generative AI, responded with gratitude, saying, "Thanks Sundar! We don't like dull days here thanks!"
See the tweet here:
Earlier, Google CEO Sundar Pichai also congratulated Elon Musk on the launch of Grok-3, a cutting-edge AI chatbot developed by Musk's startup xAI. Mr Pichai expressed enthusiasm for the new AI model, stating he looks forward to trying it out.
About Llama 4 Models
The Llama 4 models are seen as direct competition to Google's AI offerings, particularly Gemini, with Meta aiming to surpass competitors like Google and Mistral in performance and capability.
The Llama 4 Maverick model outperforms Gemini 2.0 (Flash) in coding, reasoning, multilingual, long context, and image benchmarks, while the Llama 4 Scout model delivers better results than Gemini 2.0 Flash Lite and Gemma 3 models. The Llama 4 Behemoth model is currently unavailable but is expected to offer even more advanced capabilities. These models also serve as the foundation for Meta AI, the company's virtual assistant now integrated across WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and the web.
- Llama 4 models can handle both text and image inputs, producing text outputs.
- They support 12 languages, making them versatile for diverse applications.
- This design allows for more efficient and specialized processing of different tasks.
In an Instagram video, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared the company's bold AI ambitions: "Our goal is to build the world's leading AI, open source it, and make it universally accessible... I've said for a while that open-source AI will lead the way, and with Llama 4, we're starting to see that happen."
