Meta Announces 1 Billion Downloads for its Open-Source Llama AI Models

Meta announced today that its Llama collection of open source AI models has crossed 1 billion downloads. That number is up from up from the 650 million downloads figure Meta announced back in December, which is when the company also claimed that Llama was the “most adopted” family of AI models.

Meta’s Llama models power the Meta AI chatbot that’s currently available on the web and within Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, with a standalone mobile app reportedly in the pipeline. Meta AI crossed 700 million monthly active users in January according to the company, which is already quite a huge number. However, the open source nature of Llama models is likely helping to spread Meta’s AI technology to other places.

“Since we first launched Llama in 2023, enterprises, startups, non-profits, creators, scientists, public institutions and more have used our models and tools to explore the incredible capabilities of AI. From top tech companies to universities, people and organizations all over the world are using Llama to innovate, drive scientific advances, and unlock new economic opportunities,” the company said today.

Meta highlighted Spotify as one of the early adopters of its Llama AI models. The leading streaming service has been using Llama to create real-time commentary for its AI DJ feature and offer contextualized recommendations for new music releases to its users. Spotify published a detailed report on its use of Llama models on its Research blog in December.

Meta celebrating the momentum around its open source AI models comes as rival OpenAI is about to restructure as a for-profit company. And if OpenAI’s proprietary GPT models are still being perceived as the gold standard in the AI sphere, Meta seems determined to appear as the main force behind the democratization of generative AI technology.

“We believe open sourcing AI models is essential to ensuring people everywhere have access to the benefits of AI, and every download of Llama moves us closer to that goal,” the company said today.