Meta is facing a massive class action lawsuit from five major book publishers and author Scott Turow, accusing the company of training its Llama models on pirated books from sites like LibGen and Sci-Hub. The suit claims Llama reproduces copyrighted textbooks verbatim and demands damages plus full disclosure of training data, while Meta insists AI training qualifies as fair use.
Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, just unveiled Tinker, an automated tool designed to fine-tune frontier open-source models. Developers can use a few lines of code to run supervised fine-tuning or reinforcement learning on Meta's Llama and Alibaba's Qwen, bypassing messy GPU cluster management entirely. Access is open via application for free during beta.
Meta just detailed how US military agencies and defense contractors are using its open Llama models in the field. Defense startup Legion built SOFChat for special operations forces to draft intel reports 18 times faster, while EdgeRunner AI is running models offline on standard laptops. Why it matters: Meta is making the case that open-source AI is essential for national defense.
Meta just teamed up with the US General Services Administration to roll out open-source Llama models across all federal agencies. Because Llama is publicly accessible, the OneGov initiative bypassed traditional procurement bottlenecks, allowing government teams to deploy customized AI while keeping sensitive data under federal lock and key.
Meta and AWS just launched a joint program to support 30 early-stage US startups building on Llama models. Selected teams receive six months of technical mentorship, compute credits via AWS Activate, and go-to-market backing. It marks another push by Meta to cement Llama as the default open-weights foundation for the startup ecosystem.
Mark Zuckerberg just announced Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), a new unit combining foundation models, FAIR, and product teams under Alexandr Wang and Nat Friedman. An internal memo revealed high-profile recruits poached from OpenAI and DeepMind to build Meta's next frontier models alongside Llama 4.1 and 4.2.
Meta just revealed the inaugural cohort for its Llama Startup Program, selected from more than 1,000 applications. The early-stage startups span healthcare administrative agents, legal tech, and gaming, and will receive direct backing from Meta's Llama engineering team alongside cloud credit reimbursements to offset inference and training costs.
Meta is reportedly setting up a brand-new AI research lab dedicated to pursuing superintelligence. As part of a broader shakeup, Mark Zuckerberg has tapped Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and is in talks to invest billions into his startup, while dangling seven- to nine-figure pay packages to poach researchers from OpenAI and Google.
Meta just launched the Llama Startup Program to help early-stage companies build generative AI products. Selected US startups can receive up to $6,000 a month in cloud API reimbursements for up to six months, alongside direct technical guidance from Meta's Llama team. Applications for the first cohort close on May 30, 2025.
Meta is reportedly hitting roadblocks with "Behemoth," its next flagship Llama model, pushing its launch from April to at least the fall. Engineers are struggling to deliver meaningful gains over earlier versions, sparking internal debate over whether it's ready. With 11 of 14 original Llama authors gone, pressure from Wall Street is mounting.
Joëlle Pineau, a central figure in Meta's AI research and longtime leader of FAIR, just announced she will depart the company on May 30 after nearly eight years. During her tenure, she helped steer milestone open-source projects including PyTorch, Llama, and SAM. Her exit comes amid rising geopolitical tensions and shifting internal priorities, marking a major transition for Meta's fundamental research team.
A federal judge just allowed an AI copyright lawsuit against Meta to move forward, ruling that authors including Sarah Silverman adequately alleged Meta intentionally stripped copyright management information to hide that Llama was trained on their books. While the judge dismissed a computer fraud claim, Meta still faces key infringement claims.
A federal judge just ruled that an AI copyright lawsuit against Meta can proceed, rejecting the company's bid to dismiss the case. Authors allege Meta trained its Llama models on their books and removed copyright information to hide the infringement. The judge tossed a computer fraud claim, but Meta must now defend its fair-use arguments in court.
Meta just announced LlamaCon, its first developer conference dedicated entirely to generative AI, set for April 29. The event will showcase the latest in its open-source AI roadmap as Mark Zuckerberg prepares to launch reasoning and multimodal Llama models to fend off rising open-weight competition like DeepSeek.
Meta is making a major bet on humanoid robots, setting up a dedicated team inside Reality Labs led by former Cruise CEO Marc Whitten. Instead of rushing to sell its own branded bot, Meta wants to build the underlying AI, sensor, and software platform using Llama to power third-party hardware, with talks already underway with Figure AI and Unitree.
Mark Zuckerberg used YouTube's fight against piracy to justify Meta's use of copyrighted datasets during a deposition in an ongoing AI copyright lawsuit. Newly unsealed court filings allege Meta trained its Llama models on pirated e-book repositories like LibGen and Z-Library despite internal legal warnings.
Sakana AI just unveiled Transformer², an adaptive system that adjusts LLM weights at test time to tackle different tasks like a living brain. Using Singular Value Finetuning and RL, it beats LoRA across math and coding benchmarks while requiring far fewer parameters.
Meta's internal coding assistant Metamate is quietly using OpenAI's GPT-4 alongside its own Llama model, Fortune reports. The system dynamically pulls answers from either model based on the query. Even Mark Zuckerberg's philanthropic initiative is using OpenAI tech under the hood.
Meta just hired former Salesforce AI CEO Clara Shih to run a newly formed Business AI group. The unit will build Llama-powered tools for millions of merchants across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, likely focusing on AI-generated ads and creative workflows. Instead of charging subscription fees, Meta is betting these tools will keep businesses hooked and boost ad revenue.
Mark Zuckerberg just bet Meta's future on open-source AI, turning the Llama model series into the backbone of its apps and smart glasses. After the metaverse slump, downloads topped 600 million, though investors are still waiting to see how billions in computing spend will pay off.
