Meta Could Unveil the First Llama 3 AI Models Next Week: Report

Meta is gearing up to launch the next generation of its artificial intelligence (AI) models, Llama 3, in the summer and it is said to bring new capabilities to its chatbots. Now, a new report suggests that the tech giant could launch two of its smaller AI models as soon as next week, much earlier than the previously reported schedule. The company could likely unveil the Llama 3 7b and the Llama 3 13b variants of the model now, and keep the larger 32b and 65b models for a later launch.

According to a report by The Information which cites an unnamed employee, Meta is planning to introduce two smaller AI models next week. These will serve as a precursor to the launch of its larger models later in the summer. Not a lot is known about the Llama 3 models at this point, but based on the leap Llama 2 took compared to its predecessor, the upgrades could be substantial. The larger Llama 2 models came with multimodal capabilities, which could now be enhanced with its successor. Further, considering the company was focusing on computer vision, the models might offer multiple input methods as well.

Adding a powerful computer vision will also align with the company’s product lineups — the Meta Quest series and the Meta Ray Ban. The company is said to be working on the successor to the Meta Quest Pro 2 and might be looking to take advantage of a more immersive augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). The same applies to the Meta Ray Ban which was recently upgraded with multimodal AI capabilities where the AI could recognise the specific objects and provide information about them.

The two smaller AI models that can be unveiled next week are believed to be the Llama 3 7b and the Llama 3 13b models. The former has seven billion parameters while the latter comes with 13 billion parameters. These are more specialised models that can take on smaller but specific tasks and do not require multiple GPUs.

It is likely that just like the predecessor, the newer models will also be kept open-source and Meta will make its weights public. The smaller models could also arrive in both instruct and chat versions. However, the models are not expected to feature internet crawling capabilities or provide real-time information. According to an older report by Reuters, the larger models could be released in July 2024.