Meta is partnering with the public sector in the United States to implement its LLaMA AI model for official use, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated.
During Meta’s third-quarter earnings report on Wednesday, his comments led to questions about which sectors of government would employ Meta’s AI model, its intended roles, and if there are military applications involved in LLaMA.
Additionally, there is some uncertainty around whether Meta will charge for this service.
We’re also working with the public sector to adopt LLaMA across the US government,” Zuckerberg commented in his opening remarks during Meta’s Q3 earnings call this week.
His comment was quite brief, so it’s hard to know exactly how far along the reported discussions with the US government are.
According to Meta’s spokesperson, who spoke to The Verge, the company is working with the US State Department to see how LLaMA could help address different challenges — from expanding access to safe water and reliable electricity to helping support small businesses.
She added that the company has been working with the Department of Education to explore ways LLaMA could help make financial aid simpler for students and is also discussing with others how LLaMA could support government services.
Later, she added that there was no payment involved in these partnerships.
The timing is notable, as Americans vote and Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, clearly dislikes Zuckerberg. In fact, Trump threatened jail for him during the summer.
With the potential for Trump to win the election being quite real, Zuckerberg may be looking to finalise these partnerships before it’s too late.
This is clearly a strategy that Meta’s competitors in the AI landscape are also employing. For example, OpenAI and Anthropic indicated in late August that they would be sharing their models with the US AI Safety Institute for review before their rollout.
Last week, OpenAI revealed in a blog post that its models had been used by the US Agency for International Development, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The US government might find Meta’s open-source models attractive as well. In July, the US Commerce Department released a report endorsing “open-weight” generative AI models, such as Meta’s LLaMA.
In July, Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, commented that Open AI models—permitting developers to customise them with few limitations—are more compatible with fair competition.