Meta $META could be making a big shift in the way it approaches AI models.
Numerous news outlets report that the company is working on a new AI model code-named Avocado, which could move the company away from the open-source model it has used for its Llama product. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is personally involved in the work on the next AI model, with plans to monetize it, Bloomberg reports.
Avocado is expected to launch next spring. A closed model would let Meta sell access to it, as Google $GOOGL and OpenAI do. Meta’s new Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang reportedly prefers closed models to open ones, which let outside developers review the code.
Meta has lagged in the AI race, but Zuckerberg earlier this year went on a major hiring spree, recruiting high-profile (and high-dollar) executives, including Wang (who was founder and CEO of Scale AI) and high-level workers from Apple $AAPL Safe Superintelligence and Thinking Machines.
If Meta moves to closed source, it would be something of big reversal for Zuckerberg, Just over a year ago, he railed against the closed source architecture.
“I mean, this is sort of selfish, but, you know, after building this company for a while, one of my things for the next 10 or 15 years is like, I just want to make sure that we can build the fundamental technology that we're going to be building social experiences on," Zuckerberg said during a live streamed conversation with Nvidia $NVDA CEO Jensen Huang. "Because there just have been too many things that I've tried to build and then have just been told ‘nah you can't really build that by the platform provider,’ that at some level I'm just like, ‘nah, f—k that.’”