Meta's Zuckerberg Unveils AI Studio Platform at SIGGRAPH 2024

In a highly anticipated fireside chat at SIGGRAPH 2024, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang discussed the transformative potential of open-source AI and AI assistants, according to NVIDIA Blog.

AI Studio Platform Announcement

Zuckerberg kicked off the discussion by announcing the launch of AI Studio, a new platform designed to allow users to create, share, and discover AI characters. This innovation aims to make AI more accessible to millions of creators and small businesses. “Every single restaurant, every single website will probably, in the future, have these AIs,” Huang remarked, to which Zuckerberg responded, “...just like every business has an email address and a website and a social media account, I think, in the future, every business is going to have an AI.”

Meta's Leadership in AI

Huang credited Zuckerberg and Meta for their advancements in AI, citing their contributions to computer vision, language models, and real-time translation. “You guys have done amazing AI work,” Huang said, highlighting that many in the industry rely on PyTorch, a framework developed by Meta.

The Importance of Open Source

Zuckerberg emphasized the role of open-source platforms in driving AI innovation. Meta has been at the forefront of this movement, notably with the release of Llama 3.1, an advanced AI model trained on over 16,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs. The largest version of Llama boasts 405 billion parameters, underscoring the significant investment in time and resources required for its development.

“One of the things that drives quality improvements is it used to be that you have a different model for each type of content,” Zuckerberg explained. “As the models get bigger and more general, that gets better and better.”

Zuckerberg envisions a future where platforms like Facebook and Instagram could operate under a single AI model, unifying various content types and systems. This approach aims to enhance user engagement, create personalized content, and build virtual worlds.

Vision for the Future

Looking ahead, both CEOs shared their visions for the future. Zuckerberg expressed optimism about integrating AI with the real world through wearable technology, such as eyeglasses, developed in collaboration with eyewear maker Luxotic. These innovations could transform sectors like education, entertainment, and work.

Huang highlighted the evolving nature of AI interactions, moving beyond text-based exchanges to more fluid and complex interactions. “Today’s AI is kind of turn-based. You say something, it says something back to you,” Huang said. Future AI could contemplate multiple options and simulate outcomes, making it significantly more powerful.

The discussion concluded on a lighter note, with Zuckerberg and Huang exchanging leather jackets as a token of their collaboration. Zuckerberg gifted Huang a black leather shearling jacket, while Huang gave Zuckerberg a leather jacket he had received from his wife, Lori, just for SIGGRAPH, quipping that it was “two hours old.”