Meta has released its most powerful AI model yet to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI

Tech giant Meta has released its most powerful artificial intelligence model yet—Muse Spark 1.3. Developers gained paid access to it on Wednesday, September 2, and the update will soon be available on Instagram, Facebook, and the Meta AI chatbot, according to Bloomberg.

"This is our biggest leap in model performance to date," Meta's director of AI, Alexander Wang, said in an interview with Bloomberg. According to him, the model outperforms Meta's previous models in programming and performing agent tasks—that is, carrying out tasks on behalf of the user.

Muse Spark 3.1 is capable of asking clarifying questions when a user’s commands can be interpreted in more than one way, requesting assistance when it reaches an impasse, and seeking confirmation before making decisions that may have consequences, according to Meta. When working on long-term tasks, the model adapts to the user’s preferences: it either sends regular notifications or runs quietly in the background.

Wang called Muse Spark 1.3 “competitive” compared to the Claude Fable 5.1 model from Anthropic, the world’s most expensive AI startup, and “better” than OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol. The latter is expected to release an even more advanced model called Astra soon, Bloomberg noted. Wang also added that, in his opinion, Meta’s new model outperforms “any of the existing Chinese models.”

Meta has made artificial intelligence one of its key areas of focus. But the company’s aggressive spending has drawn the attention of investors, who are demanding a clear return on their investments, according to Bloomberg. Amid this skepticism, Meta has begun work on a cloud infrastructure business that will sell access to computing power and AI models, the agency reported in July.

Meta released the first version of Muse Spark in April—at that time, the company’s stock jumped by more than 9%: investors reacted positively to the debut of Meta’s Superintelligence Labs division, led by Wang. In July, following the announcement of a shift to a paid subscription model for AI models, Meta’s stock posted its best weekly performance since the beginning of 2026.

Nevertheless, Meta’s stock remains down 10% from its level at the start of 2026. By comparison, the Nasdaq Composite “tech” index rose nearly 13% over the same period. But most analysts tracking the stock recommend buying it: the stock has 59 “Buy” and “Overweight” ratings versus just seven “Hold” ratings, according to MarketWatch.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor