Meta Offers 95% Discount for Muse Spark AI
Synopsis
Meta offered a very large discount on its Muse Spark product to users who agree to let their prompts and outputs be used. The video’s reading is that this is not a cheaper price. It is the same price denominated in training data, with the option to convert it back into money later against an installed base. There is a second thread about shadow IT, i.e. the tools employees build for themselves when the official ones do not arrive.
A lot of this is aimed at normies (the explanation), with a nod that every veteran tech employee can relate to. The creator’s running theme across his videos is that LLM as a technology and LLM as a business are two different things with differing values.
Where I land
Shadow IT is real, and I have the scar tissue. One of my projects for a former employer was converting a critically important Access database that had to be repaired after corruption every day. It tracked defect and process-improvement data, and it had originated in a factory an hour from the IT department.
That distance is the part I keep coming back to. Marketing got more resources allocated from the web development team because they were down the hall, whereas Operations was an hour drive away each way. Proximity has an impact on support. Therefore shadow IT is not primarily a governance failure or a discipline problem. It is what distance does to resource allocation. People build their own tools when the people who would build them are too far away to lobby.
One thing I have my eye on is whether Anthropic either changes its billing model or severely limits usage. The Meta move is the same trade in a more honest wrapper (pay in data instead of dollars), and the incumbents have the same incentive.
Connections
Related: The Agent Internet — Two Videos, One Premise, I Talked to an AI for 2,000 Hours And This Happened