Meta unveils new AI models to challenge rivals

On October 15, Meta unveiled its new artificial intelligence model called Muse Spark Open, which it claims can compete with or outperform similar products from leading Chinese developers. According to Alexandr Wang, Meta's chief of AI, Muse Spark Open is the most capable US open-weight model available today. Unlike closed models such as Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, developers can freely download and customize the parameters (or weights) of an open-weight model like Muse Spark Open. Chinese companies have recently dominated the open-weight market for AI models with products like Alibaba’s Qwen, Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3, and Z.ai’s GLM, but Meta asserts that its new model is now on par or better in many aspects. The model excels in coding tasks, complex software engineering, and multi-step reasoning, while also being optimized to run on Apple's M5 Ultra chips.