Meta Platforms (META.O), has opened a new tab on Tuesday, announced an application programming interface in a bid to attract businesses to more easily build AI products using its Llama artificial-intelligence models.
Llama API, which was revealed during the company's first-ever AI developer conference, will enhance and enable Meta to compete with rival model makers including Microsoft, opens new tab -backed OpenAI, Alphabet's APIs, opens new tab Google and emerging low-cost alternatives such as China's DeepSeek.
"You can now start using Llama with one line of code," chief product officer Chris Cox said during a keynote speech on stage.
APIs allow software developers to customize and quickly incorporate a piece of technology into their own products. For OpenAI, APIs constitute the firm's primary source of revenue.
Meta, which released the latest version of Llama earlier this month, did not tell any price for the API. In a press release, it said the new API was available as a limited preview for select customers and would roll out broadly in weeks to months.
The company also released a stand alone AI assistant app earlier on Tuesday. It plans to test a paid subscription service of its AI chatbot in the second quarter.
Meta releases its Llama models largely free-of-charge for use by developers, a strategy CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously stated will pay off in the form of innovative products,reducing dependence on potential competitors, boosting core platform engagement.
"You have full agency over these custom models, you control them in a way that's not possible with other offers," Manohar Paluri, a vice president of AI, said at the conference. "Whatever model you customize is yours to take wherever you want, not locked on our servers."
At the conference, Meta developers spoke about new techniques they used to efficiently decrease costs and improve the efficiency of its newest Llama iteration. Zuckerberg welcomed increased competition that would steer the competitive ecosystem away from domination by a small number of leaders.
"If another model, like DeepSeek, is better at something, then now as developers you have the ability to take the best parts of the intelligence from the different models and produce exactly what you need, which I think is going to be very powerful," Zuckerberg said.