Meta and Microsoft have partnered to create Llama 2, a “next-generation large language AI model” for commercial and research applications. Llama 2’s open-source code places greater importance on responsibility and includes a reasonable use guide, plus an acceptable use policy to prevent criminal applications, misleading information, and spam.

Meta is releasing pre-trained and conversation-oriented versions of Llama 2 for free. Meanwhile, Microsoft is making the AI tool available through the Azure AI catalog to use with cloud tools, including content filtering. Llama 2 can also run directly on Windows PCs and will be available through outside providers such as Amazon Web Services and Hugging Face.

Major rivals like the popular OpenAI GPT-4 are often locked down for greater subscription or licensing revenue, but Llama 2’s Open Source code lets companies customize the AI technology for their own purposes — such as chatbots and image generators — while providing a way for outsiders to check for biases, inaccuracies, and operating flaws.

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For Microsoft, Llama 2 is an important project in the fight against AI rivals — notably Google. Microsoft already uses OpenAI systems in Azure and Bing, so the latest Meta collaboration should give business customers greater choice, especially if they’re interested in fine-tuning an AI model to suit more specialist needs.