Muse Spark: Meta presents new AI model

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US tech giant Meta unveiled its new flagship AI model, Muse Spark, on Wednesday. It is the first model from the newly established AI division, Meta Superintelligence Labs. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has invested billions in its development to catch up with the competition.

Muse Spark is the first model in Meta's new Muse series. The new AI model is already powering the Meta AI app and website, which are receiving both an upgrade and a new design. In the coming weeks, Muse Spark will also be rolled out for WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and AI glasses, the company announced in a blog post. Meta states that this first AI model is intentionally small and fast, yet powerful enough to solve complex problems in science, mathematics, and health. "It forms a solid foundation, and the next generation is already in development."

Everyday Use

Meta states that Muse Spark has been equipped with multimodal perception. "This allows Meta AI to see and understand what you are looking at, not just read what you type. Photograph a snack shelf at the airport, and Meta AI will recognize and sort the snacks with the highest protein content – without tedious deciphering of labels," the company describes as an example. With Muse Spark, Meta AI will also be able to support users with more detailed answers to health-related questions in the future, including those involving images and diagrams, Meta promises.

The company is counting on Reuters reports that the use of AI in everyday tasks will increase interaction with its more than 3.5 billion users on its social media platforms, thus giving it a potential competitive advantage over rivals. Unlike Meta's previous AI models, Muse Spark will not be released entirely as open source. The company recently announced that while parts of its upcoming AI models will be released under open-source licenses, some components of the code will remain proprietary for security reasons.

Meta Aims to Catch Up

The US daily New York Times points out that, according to data provided by Meta, Muse Spark performs significantly better in tests for writing and reasoning skills than the company's previous AI models. Muse Spark reportedly achieves almost the performance of the top models from competitors like Google, OpenAI, or Anthropic. So far, Meta's AI models, such as the Llama series, have lagged far behind the performance of competitors' model families. However, Muse Spark still lags in programming capabilities, which have become a focus for competitors in the AI race, the paper further states.

Meta's announcement comes a day after Anthropic announced that its latest AI model, Mythos, is too powerful and therefore too dangerous for the public. Instead, Claude Mythos Preview will initially be made available exclusively to a select group of companies working in IT security. They are to use the AI technology to secure "the world's most critical software."

Billions Invested in AI Competition

US tech corporations have been investing billions of dollars in the development of AI models and the expansion of AI infrastructure for some time. Meta is trying to take a leading role in the AI competition. A central component of this strategy is the Meta Superintelligence Labs unit, founded in the summer of 2025. Alex Wang, the 29-year-old co-founder and former CEO of Scale AI, became Meta's Chief AI Officer, moving to Meta as part of a $14.3 billion deal. The acquisition of Scale AI shares is part of Meta's costly AI offensive, during which the company is specifically recruiting top AI experts from OpenAI, Anthropic, Apple, and Safe Superintelligence.

In mid-February, Meta agreed to a partnership with chip giant Nvidia, under which the Facebook group is purchasing GPUs and CPUs of various generations for tens of billions of US dollars. Furthermore, CEO Zuckerberg announced that the company would invest $600 billion in new data centers.

(akn)