Meta launches new program for developers, standalone AI assistant app

The Manila Times

Meta launches new program for developers, standalone AI assistant app   Meta Platforms on Tuesday, April 29, announced an application programming interface in a bid to woo businesses to more easily build AI products using its Llama artificial-intelligence models.   Llama API, which was unveiled during the company's first-ever AI developer conference, will help Meta go up against APIs offered by rival model makers including Microsoft-backed OpenAI, Alphabet's Google and emerging low-cost alternatives such as China's DeepSeek.   APIs allow software developers to customize and quickly integrate a piece of technology into their own products. For OpenAI, APIs constitute the firm's primary source of revenue.   Meta, which released the latest version of Llama earlier this month, did not share any pricing details for the API. In a press release, it said the new API was available as a limited preview for select customers and would roll out broadly in weeks to months.   META/REUTERS   Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe    Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net    Follow us:  Facebook - https://tmt.ph/facebook  Instagram - https://tmt.ph/instagram  Twitter - https://tmt.ph/twitter  DailyMotion - https://tmt.ph/dailymotion    Subscribe to our Digital Edition - https://tmt.ph/digital    Check out our Podcasts:  Spotify - https://tmt.ph/spotify  Apple Podcasts - https://tmt.ph/applepodcasts  Amazon Music - https://tmt.ph/amazonmusic  Deezer: https://tmt.ph/deezer  Tune In: https://tmt.ph/tunein    #TheManilaTimes  #tmtnews  #meta  #llamaapi

Transcript

00:00Leonardo Silva Reviewer

00:07All right, welcome, everybody, to LlamaCon.

00:23The groundswell of support for Llama has been awesome.

00:31We announced 10 weeks ago a billion downloads after the release of Llama 4.

00:35In just 10 weeks, that number is now 1.2, which is exciting.

00:43Today, we're announcing that you can now start using Llama with one line of code

00:47because we're releasing an API.

00:53I'm going to invite up Manahar Polari and Angela Fan, who are our very first Llama engineers,

00:59to walk you through how that works.

01:01Come on up, guys.

01:02Our goal from the beginning for Llama 4 API has been it should be the fastest and easiest

01:08way to build with Llama.

01:10Not only that, as you saw, the derivative models, it should be the best way to customize these

01:16models.

01:17And going one step further, you should be able to take these custom models with you wherever

01:22you want.

01:23No lock-in ever.

01:24The Llama API is really good at fine-tuning for your product use cases.

01:29And the best part, you have full agency over these custom models.

01:34You control them in a way that's not possible with other offerings.

01:38Whatever model you customize is yours to take wherever you want, not locked on our servers.

01:43This opens up a lot of possibilities for people that need to build and deploy custom models.

01:48It's very important.

01:49Thank you so much for joining us.

01:50We can't wait to see what you build with Llama 4 and the API.

01:54Back to Chris.

01:55This is part of how I think open source basically passes in quality.

02:07I mean, part of the open source vision is just this belief that there are going to be

02:10many, many different AIs.

02:11Right.

02:12Pick one big model and you use that and there wasn't that much fine-tuning and so on going

02:17on.

02:18With the reasoning time compute.

02:21So if another model, like DeepSeek is better or Quen is better at something, then now as

02:27developers, you have the ability to take the best parts of the intelligence from the different

02:32models and produce exactly what you need, which I think is going to be very powerful.

02:36So we have to automate it somehow.

02:38So it's coming up.

02:39I think evals and data sets are going to be super.

02:42Thanks, Mark.

02:43All right.

02:44Thank you all.

02:45Power Meta AI, which is used by almost a billion monthly users.

02:53And speaking of Meta AI, we announced an app this morning, which we launched.

03:05So we wanted to focus on pushing the limits and a fresh take on how people could use AI.

03:10We were very focused on the voice experience, the most natural possible interface.

03:15So we focused a lot on low latency, highly expressive voice.

03:19The experience is personalized, so you can connect your Facebook and Instagram accounts.

03:24And the assistant will have a rough idea of your interests based on your interaction

03:28history.

03:29You can remember things you tell it, like your kids' names and your wife's birthday and all

03:33the other things you want to make sure your assistant doesn't forget.

03:38We added an experimental mode, which is full duplex voice.

03:42This means it's trained on native dialogue between people in speech.

03:46So rather than the AI assistant reading a text response, you're actually getting native

03:50audio output.

03:51And full duplex means that the channels are open both ways so that you can hear interruptions

03:56and laughter and an actual dialogue just like a phone call.

04:00So it's pushing the limits what we think of what's possible with a natural voice experience.

04:08Thanks.

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Transcript

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