In July, 2023, Facebook released its open source artificial intelligence model Llama as an alternative to expensive proprietary models of OpenAI and Google. The new version of the AI model is called Llama 2. Its distribution will be done by Microsoft through Azure cloud service. The version will run on Windows operating system.

Previously, the version was available to only select academic institutes for research. It will be made available through direct download and through Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Hugging Face and other service providers.

Opensource provides opportunities to other developers to innovate.

The new version has been trained on 40% more data than its previous counterpart. It has 1 million plus annotations by humans to fine tune its output. Any incremental improvement on open source model eats up the market share of closed source models.

Microsoft wants to give an opportunity to developers to choose a model of their choice. It wants to become a go-to cloud platform for AI.