Meta AI has 'nearly' 600 million monthly users
Meta’s aggressive push to make its AI assistant a ubiquitous presence in its apps continues to pay off. Meta AI is on the verge of passing its next major milestone, with "nearly" 600 million monthly users, Mark Zuckerberg shared in an update. Meta AI, which debuted last fall, passed 500 million users back in October.
Meta's Latest Updates
The update came alongside the release of Meta’s latest Llama 3.3 70B model. According to Meta, the latest text model has "similar performance to the Llama 3.1 405B model," but comes "at a fraction of the cost." Ahmad Al-Dahle, VP of generative AI at Meta, posted a chart on X that showed Llama 3.3 scored higher on several benchmarks compared with Google’s Gemini Pro 1.5 and OpenAI’s GPT-4o.
Zuckerberg also briefly teased the next major release. "The next stop is Llama 4," Zuckerberg said in a video shared on Instagram, after noting that the 3.3 release was the "last big AI update of the year." Zuckerberg has so far been fairly tight-lipped about what’s in store for Llama 4, though he's offered some hints.
Other Tech Updates
This week, some of the notable tech updates include Fortnite's first-person shooter mode, Ballistic, arriving in early access on December 11. Spotify Wrapped, Apple Music Replay, and Tidal Rewind are also here. Certain TSA checkpoints will accept a digital copy of your US passport in Google Wallet. The satellites will allow mobile phones to get around 10Mbps service even in remote areas.
A Bloomberg report confirms Apple's first 5G modem will debut on the iPhone SE. Riot just announced a forthcoming trading card game (TCG) based on League of Legends. Google Photos now includes a yearly recap feature, and iFixit has started selling genuine Xbox parts as part of a deal with Microsoft.
Lastly, a Brazilian federal court has overturned an injunction forcing Apple to open up its App Store, ruling that it was "disproportionate and unnecessary."
