Meta delays its flagship AI model amid performance concerns
What's the story
Meta, a significant player in the artificial intelligence (AI) space, has reportedly delayed the launch of its new flagship AI model, internally codenamed "Behemoth."
The postponement stemmed from challenges engineers faced while attempting to improve Behemoth's performance over previous models in the Llama family.
This has sparked internal debate over whether the upgrade is significant enough to justify a public launch, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Launch delay
Behemoth's launch pushed from April to June
The launch of Behemoth, which was originally slated for April at Meta's first AI developer conference, LlamaCon, has now been pushed to June. It is also said that the release could be pushed to at least Q4.
Despite the setback with Behemoth, Meta has previously been praised for its rapid development of generative AI tools, after unveiling two smaller Llama models in April.
Financial implications
Meta's substantial investment in AI development
Meta has poured billions into AI development and intends to spend as much as $65 billion on capital expenditures this year.
The company's price-to-earnings ratio is at 25.05 as of May 15, meaning investors are shelling out $25.05 for every dollar of earnings.
Although Meta has publicly claimed that Behemoth beats OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic models on some benchmarks, internal sources told WSJ that the model is facing major training issues.
Information
Journey and team changes
Meta's AI journey started with its Fundamental AI Research Team, which created the original Llama models in early 2023. However, 11 of the 14 authors of the original Llama paper have since departed from Meta, and newer iterations are being developed by a different team.
Team transition
Other AI giants hitting the pause button
Meta isn't the only one dealing with delays. OpenAI has also postponed the launch of its next major model, GPT-5, opting to release an intermediate version, GPT-4.5, instead.
Similarly, Anthropic has pushed back the release of Claude 3.5 Opus, a more advanced AI model, though it claims the launch is just around the corner.