Mark Zuckerberg done with fruits, Meta AI models to get more serious names

No more Mango, Avocado or Watermelon on Meta's AI menu. Mark Zuckerberg's company is reportedly done with its fruit-themed naming tradition and is now planning to give future AI models more serious names. According to Business Insider, Meta has internally decided to change its naming strategy, as it feels fruit-based codenames no longer fit its ambitions to develop advanced, frontier-level AI systems."Citing a person familiar with the matter, the report suggests that the move away from fruit-themed names is largely a branding decision. Meta has not officially confirmed the change, although CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already hinted that the company will need a new naming convention.Zuckerberg earlier discussed this very issue last month during an appearance on the Cheeky Pint podcast, alongside Meta's AI chief Alexandr Wang. The two joked that the company was running out of fruits to name its AI projects.“We're out of fruits,” Zuckerberg said, adding that Meta would have to switch to a new convention. Wang then suggested durian as a possible next choice, joking that it was technically the only fruit larger than the ones Meta had already used, but not necessarily one the company would want to pick. From Avocado to Watermelon: Meta's fruit-themed AI namesInterestingly, Meta has used fruit names for several of its AI projects. Its latest AI model, Wonder Full, was internally codenamed Watermelon. The company even used watermelon imagery while teasing the model's launch. Meta described Wonder Full as its first cutting-edge frontier AI model.Before that, Avocado was used as the codename for a language model, while Mango was associated with an image-generation model.How other AI companies name their models And Meta is not alone in experimenting with unusual names for its AI projects. OpenAI, for instance, has reportedly used food-inspired codenames such as Strawberry and Garlic. Strawberry was the internal name associated with the reasoning model that eventually became o1, while Garlic was reportedly used for another AI project. OpenAI has also used Astra as a name for an AI project.Google's image-generation tool Nano Banana is another example of a food-inspired name making its way into a public-facing product.Anthropic, meanwhile, takes inspiration from literature and poetry, using names such as Opus, Sonnet and Haiku for its Claude models, with Mythos also featuring in its AI portfolio. xAI has taken a science-fiction route with Grok, while Mistral AI uses names such as Large, Small and Codestral across its model family.As for Meta, what naming system it will adopt next remains to be seen. The company has not revealed what will replace its fruit-based convention, but Zuckerberg's comments and the reported internal decision suggest that Avocado, Mango and Watermelon may have had their last run.- Ends