The social network giant Meta unveiled on Monday a new artificial intelligence (AI) model, Muse Wonder, which it says is at the level of OpenAI and Anthropic and which should make Muse, its AI assistant capable of acting alone on behalf of its users, more efficient.
Muse Wonder is “a much larger and more advanced category of models, which brings us to the cutting edge” of technology, proclaimed on X Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.). A little over a year ago, he initiated a complete overhaul of the group’s AI activities with billions to catch up with the two San Francisco laboratories which dominate the race in the United States, with Google in ambush.
Available to developers from Monday
According to Meta’s own tests, Muse Wonder outperforms the latest models from OpenAI and Anthropic, the creators of ChatGPT and Claude, on several criteria. The company Artificial Analysis, one of those that evaluates AI models, ranks it among the most efficient models on the market.
Accessible to developers from Monday, the new model will “soon” run the Muse assistant, starting with its paying subscribers, according to Meta. Launched in early September in the United States, Muse is an AI assistant capable of booking a trip, sending emails or making purchases. It quickly became the most downloaded free application on the Apple App Store in the country, even if its growth is slowing, according to the Sensor Tower firm cited by the Wall Street Journal. It now faces competition from Dots, OpenAI’s assistant, Spark, Google’s, and the start-up Instinct.
No slowdown for Meta
Meta is counting on Muse to generate new revenues beyond advertising, almost all of its turnover, which is financing up to $145 billion in investments this year, mainly in AI. The announcement comes as Silicon Valley divides over the pace of AI development, after a series of incidents in which models slipped out of the control of their creators.
The bosses of Anthropic and OpenAI, Dario Amodei and Sam Altman, as well as Elon Musk, called for a slowdown in mid-September, which Mark Zuckerberg rejects. Meta is “already working on the next step” and the development of its models will “probably feel like it goes a lot faster from now on,” he told the Financial Times.
In August, he established the free diffusion of AI as the best defense against its dangers, by relaunching the group’s open models, setting itself apart from its American rivals who keep their most powerful models under exclusive control. Muse Wonder, however, is only accessible against payment and its parameters have not been made public.
