Meta has unveiled a new AI model, Muse Spark, CNBC reported on April 8.

It is the first AI model released since Meta recruited Alexandr Wang (알렉산드르 왕), formerly chief executive of Scale AI, 9 months ago.

Muse Spark is the first model in the Muse series developed by Meta Superintelligence Labs, led by Wang. He joined as part of Meta's 14.3 billion dollar investment in Scale AI in June last year.

Meta has been seeking a change of direction after its latest open-source model release in April last year failed to win support from developers. Meta said Meta Superintelligence Labs rebuilt its AI stack over the past 9 months and developed it faster than any previous development cycle.

Rather than positioning Muse Spark as the top-performing model, Meta is emphasising efficiency and competitive performance.

Meta said improved AI training techniques and rebuilt technical infrastructure delivered performance similar to its existing mid-sized Llama 4 model using far fewer computing resources. Meta said the model has competitive performance in multimodal perception, reasoning, healthcare and agent tasks.

Unlike its previous open-source approach, Muse Spark was released as a proprietary model. Meta said it is willing to release an open-source version in the future. It is also trying a new revenue model by providing the underlying technology to outside developers through an API. It is currently providing a private API preview only to selected partners and plans to expand paid API access later.

Muse Spark has been applied immediately to the standalone Meta AI app and desktop website. It is expected to be added within weeks to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Ray-Ban AI smart glasses.

There are 3 modes of use. Instant mode answers simple questions quickly. Thinking mode handles complex queries such as analysing legal documents or identifying nutritional information from food photos. Contemplating mode has multiple AI agents reason in parallel to handle complex tasks.

Meta said Contemplating mode can compete with top-tier reasoning modes such as Google Gemini Deep Think and GPT Pro. A Shopping mode was also added to Meta AI to support clothing purchases or interior design ideas.