The model, dubbed Muse Spark, is proprietary with access limited to Meta’s AI portal or API access for those lucky enough to get an invite. Yep, this thing’s locked down tighter than Zuck’s private school<\/a>.<\/p>\n Detailed in a blog post<\/a>, Meta described the model as the “first step on our scaling ladder and the first product of a ground-up overhaul of our AI efforts.”<\/p>\n Meta’s decision not to release Muse Spark’s weights comes in stark contrast to Zuckerberg’s earlier position that “open source AI represents the world’s best shot at harnessing this technology to create the greatest economic opportunity and security for everyone.”<\/p>\n Those comments came forth in a 2,000-plus-word manifesto<\/a> titled “Open Source AI is the Path Forward,” in which Zuckerberg waxed poetic on the merits of open source AI.<\/p>\n “If we were the only company using Llama, this ecosystem wouldn’t develop and we’d fare no better than the closed variants of Unix,” Zuckerberg wrote, drawing comparisons to the rise of the Linux operating system.<\/p>\n “Opening Llama doesn’t undercut our revenue, sustainability, or ability to invest in research like it does for closed providers,” he argued, emphasizing that Meta’s business model didn’t depend on selling access to its models, either.<\/p>\n That was the case until about a year later, when Meta launched its Llama API<\/a> inference service, alongside its Llama 4 family of models.\u00a0<\/p>\n But never fear, Zuckerberg hasn’t given up on open models entirely. “Looking ahead, we plan to release increasingly advanced models that push the frontier of intelligence and capabilities, including new open source models,” he wrote in a Threads post<\/a>.<\/p>\n This kind of dual-tracking is common. In fact, Google routinely releases small open weights models derived from its larger proprietary Gemini models, with its Gemma 4 family being the latest example. OpenAI has made similar moves with gpt-oss, though it remains to be seen if that was a one-off or not.<\/p>\n But if Zuckerberg actually believed any of what he wrote in 2024, why bother with a closed model in the first place?<\/p>\n Perhaps because even though Meta hyped Llama 4’s multimodal and agentic capabilities, the model never lived up to expectations, with Meta ultimately abandoning<\/a> development of its largest variant, codenamed Behemoth, which would have weighed in at 2 trillion parameters.<\/p>\n The flop was apparently embarrassing enough that Meta started over from scratch, paying top dollar to woo top AI software engineers and executives, including Alexandr Wang<\/a>, who now leads Meta Superintelligence Labs.<\/p>\n Will Zuck’s new Muse Spark joy?<\/p>\n So it’s not open source, you can’t download it, but is it any good? It’s a good question, because if it’s not, Meta’s shareholders might start to wonder why the company is so keen to light $135 billion<\/a> on fire.<\/p>\n If Meta is to be believed, Muse Spark is a big improvement over Llama 4. The model boasts performance matching and in many cases besting the top models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.<\/p>\n
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