Meta's most capable open AI model can run on Macs
What's the story
Meta has unveiled its latest Muse Spark Open AI model, claiming it to be the "most capable US open-weight model to date." The tech giant also noted that this is the first of its kind that can run on desktops using two Apple M5 Ultra Mac Studios with the latest MLX framework. In a rare collaboration, Meta and Apple worked together for this launch and are publicly supporting each other's efforts.
Joint venture
Meta and Apple's CEOs praised each other's efforts
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to X to express his excitement over the collaboration. He said, "Muse Spark Open -- weights releasing today -- runs great on new Mac Studios thanks to work with @johnternus and Apple."
Apple's new CEO John Ternus also chimed in, saying, "Amazing to run a model of Muse Spark Open's caliber and scale this efficiently, right from your desk. Mac Studio keeps pushing the boundaries of on-device AI!"
Model details
Muse Spark Open is a 'natively multimodal model'
The Muse Spark Open is a "natively multimodal model" with 816 billion total parameters.
It "excels at long-horizon tasks, complex software engineering, and multi-step reasoning," according to Meta.
This comes from Meta's description of the new model as one that can run locally on high-end Mac computers instead of relying on cloud data centers.
Technical specifications
Model can be run on 2 to 4 Mac Studios
The Muse Spark Open model can be run on two to four Mac Studio PCs for tasks like coding, video analysis, or other agentic work.
This local operation adds a layer of security and saves users money.
The model's parameters can be downloaded from the internet and run on different hardware, making it an open-weight model.
Hardware advantage
Muse Spark Open could challenge OpenAI and Anthropic
Meta's AI chief Alexandr Wang said that many powerful open-weight models are too big to be run on most personal computers.
But Apple's Mac Studios provide enough memory for users to practically run Muse Spark Open.
This move is a major vote of confidence in Meta's renewed AI efforts and could pose a challenge to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Developers can download a version of the AI model from platforms like Hugging Face without extra configuration for Apple's silicon.