IBM, Meta partner to bring Llama 2 to Watsonx

IBM and Meta Platforms have teamed up to bring Meta's AI large language model to IBM's enterprise AI platform, Watsonx. 

The partnership involves hosting Meta's Llama 2-chat model, which has 70 billion parameters, on the watsonx.ai studio. This collaboration builds upon IBM and Meta's joint efforts in advancing AI innovation. They are actively working on open source projects by Meta, including the PyTorch machine learning framework and the Presto query engine used in watsonx.data. 

IBM's AI platform, Watsonx, is designed to seamlessly integrate AI capabilities into business workflows. It is now offering exclusive early access to Meta Platforms' Llama 2 AI language model for a select group of clients. Llama 2, the commercial version of Meta's open-source AI model, was unveiled in July. It aims to compete in the emerging generative AI market, alongside other industry leaders like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard. 

Through this partnership, IBM aims to enhance its selection of both external and internal AI models. Clients using watsonx.ai will soon have access to the potent Llama 2 model, further enhancing their AI-powered applications. 

Notably, the integration of Meta's model aligns with IBM's strategy of offering comprehensive support for Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. This includes questions answering, content creation, summarisation, and text classification. 

As per the company, by working together, users of watsonx can already utilise AI models from both IBM and the Hugging Face community. These pre-trained models cater to various NLP requirements, enabling AI developers to create more efficient and advanced applications. 

Moreover, Meta has shared that the collaborative efforts with IBM are just beginning with the introduction of Llama 2, their open-source AI model. IBM's roadmap includes the rollout of more software tools, such as AI tuning studios, fact sheets, and other generative AI models, aimed at enhancing the accessibility and usability of AI technologies across various business types and industries. 

IBM introduced the watsonx platform in May, aiming to empower enterprises to automate various tasks including business workflows, internal processes, and IT operations, all while bolstering security against potential threats. 

In July, at a semiconductor conference in San Francisco, Mukesh Khare, IBM Semiconductors' general manager, revealed the company's consideration of employing a chip referred to as the Artificial Intelligence Unit. This chip is being looked at for integration into IBM's watsonx platform.