Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a short message on the Threads platform that Meta’s open artificial intelligence model family, Llama, has surpassed 1 billion downloads. This represents approximately a 53% increase from the 650 million downloads recorded in early December 2024.
Llama powers Meta’s AI assistant, Meta AI, and is used across the tech giant’s various platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. This initiative is part of Meta’s long-term effort to build a large-scale AI ecosystem. The company provides these models and the tools required for customization for free under a special license.
Although some developers and companies argue that Meta’s Llama license terms impose certain restrictions on commercial use, Llama has achieved widespread success since its release in 2023. Companies like Spotify, AT&T, and DoorDash currently use Llama models in their production processes.
However, Meta is not without challenges. Llama is at the center of a legal case alleging that Meta used copyrighted e-books without permission for training purposes. Several European Union member states have forced Meta to delay or, in some cases, cancel Llama’s release plans due to privacy concerns.
Llama’s performance has also been outpaced by competitors, such as the R1 model from the Chinese AI lab DeepSeek. In response, Meta has established "war rooms" to incorporate DeepSeek’s advancements into its own models and has announced plans to invest $80 billion in AI-related projects this year.
The company plans to release several new Llama models in the coming months. These will include reasoning models similar to OpenAI’s o3-mini and models with multimodal capabilities. Zuckerberg has also hinted at “agentic” features, suggesting that some models may operate independently.
"I believe this year could be the year when Llama and open-source AI models become the most advanced and widely used models," Zuckerberg said during Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings report for 2024. "Our goal this year is to take the lead with Llama."
More information about Llama is expected to be revealed at Meta’s first generative AI developer conference, LlamaCon, on April 29.
