Meta has claimed that its new artificial intelligence model is the first open-source system that will rival products from competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic. In a blogpost, the company said its new model, with the unwieldy name of Llama 3.1 405B, "is competitive" with others – including those from OpenAI and Anthropic – "across a range of tasks". If true, it would mean that for the first time, one of the most powerful AI models in the world is available without an intermediary charging for access – or controlling what its technology is used for. "Developers can fully customise the models for their needs and applications, train on new datasets, and conduct additional fine-tuning," Meta said. "This enables the broader developer community and the world to more fully realise the power of generative AI. Developers can fully customise for their applications and run in any environment … all without sharing data with Meta."