News

Meta & Microsoft Release AI Language Tool For Commercial Use

The open-source AI model, called Llama 2, will be available through the Azure AI catalog and Amazon Web Services, as well as in a standalone Windows version.

Published

3 years ago

July 19, 2023

Nour Nasir

Meta

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.

Related Topics:Artificial Intelligence Meta Microsoft

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At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

2 weeks ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

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Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.