Microsoft makes Meta’s new A.I. model available to Azure customers

Microsoft It’s making a big push into artificial intelligence through a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI, whose chatbot technology is being used with search and other key products.

But Microsoft made it clear that it’s not strictly an OpenAI store when it comes to generative AI.At the Inspire conference on Tuesday, the company explain it is making meta The new artificial intelligence large language model, called Llama 2, is available on its Azure cloud computing service.

Mehta said in an article blog post Microsoft is a “preferred partner” for its Llama 2 software, which is freely available to companies and researchers.

“Meta and Microsoft share a commitment to democratize artificial intelligence and its benefits, and we’re pleased that Meta and Llama 2 are taking an open approach,” Microsoft said. “We give developers choice in the types of models they build, supporting open and cutting-edge models, and are delighted to be Meta’s preferred partner as they debut the new version of Llama 2 to commercial customers.”

A Meta spokesperson said the company is “not focused on monetizing Llama 2.” Companies wishing to access the software through a commercial license will need to pay Microsoft for the enterprise hosting feature.

In February, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the public release of Llama, which aims to help scientists and engineers explore applications of artificial intelligence, such as answering questions and summarizing documents.

While Meta won’t make money directly from the Microsoft deal, it could benefit by putting its homegrown AI software into the hands of more users and developers. Llama 2 is also available via amazon Web services and Hugging Face (a popular service used by AI researchers).

The deal is significant for Microsoft because it shows that the software giant is backing AI language models not developed by OpenAI.

Microsoft shares were up about 4.7 percent at $362.12 in midday trading.

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