UAE Releases New Falcon AI Model to Challenge Meta, OpenAI
- Model shows UAE is a “serious player” in AI, official says
- Abu Dhabi plans to commercialize Falcon with new unit AI71
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A research arm of the Abu Dhabi government has released an updated version of Falcon, its artificial intelligence model, that a senior official said outperforms rivals and proves the emirate is a “serious player” in the global AI race.
Falcon is a large language model like OpenAI’s GPT and Google’s Gemini — computing systems that power chatbots, image generators and other generative AI tools. First launched in 2023, Falcon is open-source, which means its code is shared widely. Its new version, Falcon 2 11B, is more powerful than the latest comparable open-source model from Meta Platforms Inc. and is on par with Gemini by some metrics, according to the Technology Innovation Institute, or TII, the Abu Dhabi group behind Falcon.