Meta offers Llama AI to US government for national security

Meta will allow US government agencies and contractors in national security roles to use its Llama AI. The move relaxes Meta’s acceptable use policy restricting what others can do with the large language models it develops, and brings Llama ever so slightly closer to the generally accepted definition of open-source AI.

Llama will be available to US government agencies and private sector partners, including Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, and Amazon, to support applications like logistics planning, cybersecurity, and threat assessment, Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg wrote in a blog post Monday.

“We believe it is in both America and the wider democratic world’s interest for American open-source models to excel and succeed over models from China and elsewhere,” Clegg wrote. “As open-source models become more capable and more widely adopted, a global open-source standard for AI models is likely to emerge, as it has with technologies like Linux and Android.”

Significantly, this comes days after Reuters reported that Chinese research institutions linked to the People’s Liberation Army develop a chatbot using Llama for intelligence gathering and decision support.