Meta AI's Yann LeCun says he played only an indirect role in the development of Llama models

Meta AI researcher Yann LeCun is distancing himself from the Llama models. In a recent post on X, LeCun said he "has not been involved in any Llama," except for a "very indirect" role in Llama 1 and pushing for the open-source release of Llama 2. He explained that since early 2023, Llama 2, 3, and 4 have been developed by Meta's GenAI team, which has since been replaced by the TBD Lab.

Yann LeCun clarifies his limited involvement with recent Llama models in a statement on X. | Image: via X

Although the Llama models were briefly popular in the open-source community, they were quickly overtaken by other models, and Llama 4 failed to meet expectations.

LeCun leads FAIR, Meta's fundamental AI research group focused on long-term projects outside of large language models. FAIR has recently faced layoffs, while TBD Lab, led by Alexandr Wang, is gaining influence within the company.