Meta to charge cloud providers for AI tech that it said was free

Meta Platforms Inc. plans to earn cash from the key cloud-computing firms after they resell its synthetic intelligence massive language mannequin, Llama 2.

“If you’re someone like Microsoft, Amazon or Google, and you’re going to basically be reselling the services, that’s something that we think we should get some portion of the revenue for,” Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg mentioned Wednesday on a quarterly earnings name. “I don’t think that that’s going to be a large amount of revenue in the near-term, but over the long term, hopefully that can be something.”

That’s a change in tone from simply final week, when the corporate mentioned it could be offering the know-how without cost. On July 18, Meta introduced that it’s teaming up with Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. to supply its massive language mannequin for industrial use on its companions’ cloud choices with out charging for entry or use.

Instead, Meta mentioned the making the know-how out there without cost and opening its supply code would lead to enhancements from a wider group of builders.

Zuckerberg continues to be calling Llama 2 open, and reiterated these advantages on Wednesday’s name. But along with making the know-how open-source, Meta additionally included a time period for the biggest cloud firms that they don’t get a free license to make use of it, however must make a business association with Meta, Zuckerberg mentioned.

Large language fashions, or LLMs, energy text-based chatbots, although their makes use of aren’t restricted to serving to AI reply questions. The fashions are educated by being fed immense quantities of data, normally from the web, to refine a course of for producing responses.

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