--- title: "Facebook’s Powerful ChatGPT Competitor Leaks on 4Chan" description: "Facebook's new artificial intelligence model for researchers and governments has been leaked — and naturally, it ended up on 4chan. " date: "2023-03-09" modified: "2023-03-09" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/facebooks-ai-leaks-4chan" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" tags: - "facebook" - "large language models" - "Meta" - "the digest" --- # Facebook’s Powerful ChatGPT Competitor Leaks on 4Chan ![Facebook's new artificial intelligence model for researchers and governments has been leaked — and naturally, it ended up on 4chan. ]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Runaway LLaMa Meta-formerly-Facebook's new artificial intelligence model, which is meant to rival the likes of OpenAI's GPT-3 model, has been leaked — and naturally, it ended up on 4chan. As [*Vice* reports](), the version of the company's Large Language Model Meta AI (LLaMa) that made its way to the controversial forum wasn't intended for public usage. It was designed to be beta tested by researchers and governments — which means that it was most likely leaked by someone who had been granted early access to it. This leak, as the report notes, likely marks the first time a proprietary AI has been shared before it was officially released by the company that owns it. What's more, Meta only [announced the LLaMA model at the end of February](), and in its statement to *Vice*, Meta did not deny that the language model had been leaked. But it's trying to get ahead of the problem. [According to Clement Delangue](), head of the AI firm Hugging face, Meta has been filing takedown requests in an effort to stem the leak. ## Isn't It Ironic Ironically, Meta bragged in its announcement of the model's limited release that the company was "democratizing access" to large language models like LLaMa in part to avoid the kinds of toxic outputs that we've seen from these sorts of AIs in the past. Last year, for instance, Meta's own BlenderBot 3 AI chatbot [quickly turned racist]() in a matter of a single weekend. By making its newest AI open-source, the company is hoping to make it more robust and less likely to turn into a monster. "Even with all the recent advancements in large language models, full research access to them remains limited because of the resources that are required to train and run such large models," Meta's announcement reads. "This restricted access has limited researchers’ ability to understand how and why these large language models work, hindering progress on efforts to improve their robustness and mitigate known issues, such as bias, toxicity, and the potential for generating misinformation." There might be a silver lining for Meta, given the recent leak. Others in the machine learning community [told *The Verge*]() that even though it wasn't an ideal way for the model to go public, wider usage will nevertheless help the model grow. That said, it was leaked on the site known colloquially as [the armpit of the internet](), so the people who got access to it there may end up teaching it some of the same old tricks that have plagued AI chatbots for years now. **More on Meta:** [*Zuckerberg Says Facebook Will Lean Hard Into AI* ]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()