Meta's Llama 4 'herd' controversy and AI contamination, explained

Meta introduced the fourth generation of its wildly popular Llama generative artificial intelligence program, called the Llama 4 "herd," over the weekend. Almost immediately, a debate ensued that was somewhat uncharacteristic of previous releases. The herd is a collection of three different models, dubbed Behemoth, Scout, and Maverick. Meta says that Behemoth, which is still in development, will be "one of the smartest LLMs in the world" when it's done. It uses a total of two trillion neural "weights," or parameters, which would be the largest amount disclosed publicly by any researchers.