Meta Announces Launch of Code Lama, AI Model Assist in Writing Computer Code

On August 24, Meta Platforms announced the release of an artificial intelligence (AI) model designed to aid in the writing of computer code, furthering its push into the new technology. Code Llama, which will be available for free, can write code based on human text prompts and can also be used for code completion and debugging, according to a blog post by the social media giant.

Since the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT late last year, enterprises and businesses have flocked to the nascent generative AI market for newer capabilities and refining business processes.

This year, Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has released a flurry of AI models, mostly for free, including an open-source language model called Llama, which poses a serious challenge to proprietary models sold by Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Alphabet's Google.

The new AI model is based on Meta's latest Llama 2 language model and will be available in various configurations, according to the company, as it prepares to compete with Microsoft's code-writing tool GitHub Copilot.

According to Meta, Code Llama supports popular coding languages such as Python, Java, and C++ but is not recommended for general text tasks.