Meta is partnering with the US government to deploy Llama AI.
A spokesperson for the social media giant insisted Mark Zuckerberg’s firm will not profit from the use of its language models by government agencies. This commitment aligns with Meta’s stated mission of making AI technology more accessible and beneficial to public institutions.
“We’ve partnered 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…been in touch with the Department of Education to learn how Llama could help make the financial aid process more user friendly for students and are in discussions with others about how Llama could be utilized to benefit the government,” Faith Eischen said. The partnership has the potential to impact over 50 million students who apply for federal financial aid annually.
Llama is a family of autoregressive large language models (LLMs) released by Meta AI in February 2023. The most recent version, Llama 3.3, was released in December 2024. The model has shown impressive capabilities in natural language processing, with benchmarks indicating performance comparable to other leading AI systems.
Meta – the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp – is certainly making waves in the political sphere, having just donated $1 million to president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund. This contribution represents one of the largest corporate donations to an inauguration ceremony in U.S. history.
After the tech and social media mogul Zuckerberg, 40, dined with the 78-year-old Republican at his Mar-a-Lago resort last month, he’s now pledged his support by donating the huge sum towards the collection to cover the costs of Trump’s swearing-in ceremony on January 20. The meeting marked a significant shift in the relationship between the two influential figures.
The pair have put the past behind them as they’ve not always seen eye to eye. Their reconciliation comes after years of public disagreements and policy disputes over social media regulation and content moderation.
Meta‘s Facebook and Instagram suspended Trump’s accounts on the apps in 2021, after he allegedly showed his support to the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. The suspension affected Trump’s reach to over 88 million followers across both platforms.
Trump – who previously held office at the White House between 2017 and 2021 – previously branded Facebook “an enemy of the people”. This statement came during a period of increased scrutiny over social media’s role in political discourse.
The former reality star is also close buddies with another tech mogul, Tesla and X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk, 53, who he has made the head of his newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) alongside Vivek Ramaswamy. This appointment signals a deeper integration of tech industry leaders into government operations.
Zuckerberg and Musk have had a frosty relationship, which heightened after the latter acquired Twitter for $44 billion in 2022. Their rivalry has been characterized by public disagreements over AI development, social media policies, and business practices.
Industry analysts suggest that Meta’s government partnership could significantly influence the future of AI implementation in public service, potentially setting precedents for other tech companies’ collaborations with federal agencies. The initiative is expected to serve as a model for future public-private partnerships in the tech sector, with implications for both government efficiency and technological innovation.