The esteemed Technology Innovation Institute (TII), a global scientific research centre and the applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council, is delighted to announce the introduction of Falcon 2 11B, the second iteration of its large language model (LLM).
This latest model consists of two versions: Falcon 2 11B, an LLM trained on 5.5 trillion tokens with 11 billion parameters, and Falcon 2 11B VLM, which distinguishes itself with its vision-to-language model (VLM) capabilities. This groundbreaking feature enables the conversion of visual inputs into textual outputs, marking a significant advancement in AI innovation.
Falcon 2 11B VLM stands out as TII’s first multimodal model and currently holds the top spot in the market with its image-to-text conversion capability. In an independent evaluation by Hugging Face, a US-based platform with an objective evaluation tool and global leaderboard for open LLMs, Falcon 2 11B has demonstrated exceptional performance, outperforming Meta’s Llama 3 with 8 billion parameters and performing on par with Google’s Gemma 7B.
Both Falcon 2 11B and 11B VLM are open-source, providing unrestricted access to developers worldwide. TII has plans to expand the Falcon 2 next-generation models in the future, introducing various sizes enhanced with advanced machine learning capabilities like Mixture of Experts (MoE).
The multilingual capabilities of Falcon 2 11B models allow them to handle tasks in different languages, enhancing their versatility and effectiveness across diverse scenarios. Furthermore, Falcon 2 11B VLM has the ability to identify and interpret images and visuals, offering a wide range of applications across industries such as healthcare, finance, e-commerce, education, and legal sectors. These models are also highly scalable and easy to deploy and integrate, running efficiently on just one graphics processing unit (GPU).
His Excellency Faisal Al Bannai, Secretary General of Advanced Technology Research Council, emphasized the importance of Falcon 2 11B, reaffirming their commitment to the open-source movement and the Falcon Foundation. Dr Hakim Hacid, Executive Director and Acting Chief Researcher of the AI Cross-Centre Unit at the Technology Innovation Institute, highlighted the multitude of benefits of smaller, more efficient models, along with the new horizons for accessibility in AI through Falcon 2’s vision-to-language capabilities.
The release of Falcon 2 11B marks a significant milestone in the AI industry, and TII looks forward to continuing its work on more GenAI innovations in the future, including the adoption of the Mixture of Experts. Falcon 2 11B is licensed under TII Falcon License 2.0, promoting the responsible use of AI through an acceptable use policy.
With the launch of Falcon 2 11B, TII is taking a significant step forward in the field of AI innovation, demonstrating its commitment to pushing boundaries and empowering developers worldwide with cutting-edge tools for their AI journey.