Advancing ongoing efforts to foster innovation in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Meta (formerly Facebook) on Thursday announced a two-year partnership with the Department of Information Technology, Electronics and Communications (IT, E&C), Government of Telangana.
The strategic partnership aims to provide public officials and citizens with access to the latest emerging technologies, such as AI, to improve e-governance and citizen services.
The tech giant said that it will collaborate with the Government of Telangana to facilitate the implementation of e-governance solutions using Meta’s open-source Generative AI technologies, including the latest Llama 3.1 model. This collaboration is intended to revamp various aspects of public service delivery and e-governance, as well as boost the efficiency and productivity of government departments and agencies through the use of Gen AI, the company said.
“By sharing openly available AI models, we’re driving innovation and democratizing access. This mission converges with our dedication to e-governance, leveraging digital technologies to enhance government services, transparency, and citizen engagement in the state of Telangana,” Shivnath Thukral, VP and Head of Public Policy, Meta India, said in a statement.
Moreover, the company said that this partnership is aligned with Meta’s open approach to AI innovation and Telangana’s digital leadership, aiming to harness the potential of AI to drive social and economic opportunities in the state, while addressing unique local needs, and paving the way for groundbreaking solutions.
Meta’s leading open-source Llama ecosystem is growing rapidly. Llama models have nearly reached 350 million downloads to date, which is more than 10 times the number of downloads from last year.
There is a vibrant community of developers fine-tuning Llama for their own use cases in India and globally. This includes large enterprises such as AT&T, DoorDash, Goldman Sachs, Nomura, Shopify, Spotify, and Zoom, along with Infosys and KPMG using Llama internally, the company mentioned.