Meta Platforms is preparing a seismic shift in its artificial intelligence strategy with the development of two next-generation models, code-named Mango and Avocado, designed to reclaim its dominance in the rapidly evolving visual and text-based AI landscapes. According to internal reports and high-level briefings first detailed by the Wall Street Journal, the Silicon Valley giant is distancing itself from its traditional incremental updates to the Llama family in favor of a high-stakes "superintelligence" play. Mango, the flagship of this new era, is a specialized image and video generation model engineered to directly challenge OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s highly successful Nano Banana generator. While Mango focuses on pushing the boundaries of cinematic realism and visual coherence, its sibling model, Avocado, is being fine-tuned as a high-performance language system with a primary emphasis on advanced programming and logical reasoning.
The development of these models marks the first major output from the newly established Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), an elite division formed after a massive internal restructuring earlier this year. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has personally spearheaded this offensive, orchestrating a high-profile talent raid that saw more than 20 top researchers poached from OpenAI. Central to this transformation is the appointment of 28-year-old Alexandr Wang, the founder of Scale AI, as Meta’s Chief AI Officer. The partnership, which reportedly involved a staggering $14 billion investment into Scale AI, places Wang at the helm of Meta’s most ambitious research projects to date. During a recent internal Q&A session alongside Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, Wang described Mango not just as a creative tool, but as a step toward "world models" AI systems that move beyond simple pattern recognition to understand the fundamental laws of physics and the physical reality of the environments they simulate.
This technological pivot comes at a critical juncture for Meta, as competitors like Google have seen explosive growth with viral AI features. Google’s Nano Banana tool recently crossed 23 million new users by allowing them to transform selfies into 3D figurines, a trend that Meta is eager to replicate and exceed within its own ecosystem. To do so, Meta is leaning into the concept of "perception-based intelligence," where Mango will analyze vast quantities of visual data to create videos that are not only high-resolution but also physically consistent over longer durations. While Meta’s previous experiments like "Movie Gen" and "Vibes" offered a glimpse into its video capabilities, Mango is expected to be a much more robust, production-grade engine intended for integration across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp by the first half of 2026.
Beyond the technical specifications, the launch of Mango and Avocado signals a potential shift in Meta’s long-standing philosophy of open-source development. Historically, Meta has released its Llama models to the public to foster an ecosystem of innovation, but industry analysts suggest that these new "fruit-named" models may be kept as closed systems. This move would allow Meta to monetize high-end generative features through premium subscriptions or exclusive creator tools, following the commercial lead of OpenAI’s GPT series. As the company allocates tens of billions of dollars toward H100 GPU clusters and top-tier talent, the success of Project Mango will likely serve as the ultimate litmus test for whether Zuckerberg’s aggressive spending can finally close the gap with the industry's frontrunners and redefine the future of digital content creation.
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