• OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT while Google created Bard chatbots.
• Both ChatGPT and Bard chatbots are premium AI tools.
• Meta Platforms has released a free-of-charge version of its artificial intelligence model.

As the artificial intelligence (AI) race gathers momentum, Meta Platforms, the company behind Facebook and newly launched Threads, on Tuesday unveiled a new and free-of-charge version of its AI model.

The new AI entrant will compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard and possibly set the pace for upcoming AI tools including AltSignals’ blockchain-powered ActualizeAI AI ecosystem. AltSignals is currently conducting the presale of ASI token, the cryptocurrency that will power ActualizeAI.

The AltSignals presale is currently in its third stage (Stage 2) after successful BETA and Stage 1. The ASI token price increases with each stage and it is currently costing $0.01875.

Meta’s open-source AI

Contrary to OpenAI and Google, Meta has refrained from releasing generative AI products and instead released Llama, a language model created especially for researchers so they could refine it.

Unlike the attention-grabbing AIs created by OpenAI and Google, Llama is open-source, making its inner workings accessible to everyone to tinker with and modify. The industry-leading GPT-4 from OpenAI and most of the other generative AI tools are closed and proprietary, and their users cannot access their source code or in-depth explanations of how their data is handled.

CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook that “open source drives innovation because it enables many more developers to build with new technology.” He went ahead to state that because more people can examine open-source software to find and address potential problems, “it also improves safety and security.”

The emphasis on safety also highlights a departure from OpenAI’s models, which have alarmed users by producing false information or deviating from expected behaviour during chatbot interactions.

Llama 2, the newly released upgraded version of Meta’s Llama, will be accessible to any company via download or via a special arrangement with Microsoft’s Azure cloud service.

Microsoft increases AI charges

Microsoft has partnered with both OpenAI and Meta for their respective AI tools.

However, in a hint at the financial windfall it anticipates from the AI technology, Microsoft on Tuesday announced it will be charging at least 53% more to access new artificial intelligence features in its widely used office software.

The company has also promised that a more secure version of the Bing search engine will be made immediately available to businesses in an effort to allay their data protection worries, spur interest in AI, and increase competition with Google.

With the revised charges, customers will now be required to pay $30 per user, per month for Microsoft 365’s AI copilot, which promises to draught emails in Outlook, write documents in Word, and make nearly all of an employee’s data accessible via the prompt of a chatbot, the company said at its virtual Inspire conference.

Microsoft is pointing businesses to Bing Chat Enterprise, a bot in its search engine that can create internet content.

Unlike the public Bing that millions of web surfers have accessed in recent months, the enterprise version will not allow any viewing or saving of user data to train underlying technology. An employee would have to log in with work credentials to gain the protections.