Top 9 Large Language Models of 2024

The evolution of large language models continues to shape various industries by offering sophisticated solutions for natural language processing tasks. In recent years, these language models have become pivotal in driving innovation and efficiency across business operations. In 2023, we covered some of the best models that epitomized this pivotal force.

As we step into 2024, it's crucial to understand which large language models now lead the pack from our discussion on the best and how they can be leveraged for competitive advantage. This guide provides a detailed overview of the top ten language models of 2024, exploring their development backgrounds, distinctive characteristics, and practical applications in enterprise settings.

What Are Large Language Models?

Large Language Models, also known as foundation models, are a sophisticated form of artificial intelligence that has been meticulously crafted to comprehend, generate, and interact with natural language. Trained on extensive datasets that encompass a plethora of text sources, these models are adept at executing a multitude of language-related tasks. These tasks include but are not limited to translation, summarization, question answering, and content creation. The underlying technology of LLMs is built upon intricate neural network architectures that enable the processing of text inputs. Consequently, this results in outputs that exhibit an understanding and responsiveness akin to human language capabilities.

How Do Large Language Models Work? 

In essence, Large Language Models leverage advanced deep learning techniques such as Transformer architecture—a design tailored for handling sequential data with exceptional proficiency. Throughout the training phase, these models absorb patterns present in the data and harness this acquired knowledge when tasked with text generation or interpretation. Such an AI system is thus capable of participating in complex conversations, delivering profound responses to inquiries, or even crafting original written material that demonstrates a deep contextual comprehension.

9 Best Large Language Models of 2024

Without much ado, let’s now discuss each large language model's specifics by highlighting who developed them, their release years, and what sets them apart from competitors along with a detailed description that includes key advantages and disadvantages.

1. GPT-4 (Turbo / 0314 / 0613)

• Developed by: OpenAI
• Release Year: 2024

GPT-4, including its Turbo (gpt-4-1106-preview) and 0613 variants, represents a significant advancement in OpenAI's generative pre-trained transformer series. This model stands out for its increased parameter count and enhanced ability to understand and generate human-like text. Furthermore, GPT-4’s significant advancement in a language model's performance is evident in its ability to understand and generate human-like text. While OpenAI has not disclosed the precise size of GPT-4, there are rumors that it possesses around 1.76 trillion parameters. This substantial increase in parameters is indicative of its advanced capabilities in processing and generating language, far surpassing its predecessor GPT-3.5. 

The Turbo variant of GPT-4, known as GPT-4 Turbo, is designed to offer improved efficiency and faster performance, though specific metrics regarding its speed increase are not provided. This variant is particularly useful in scenarios where rapid response and processing are crucial, such as real-time interactive applications.

The 0613 version, meanwhile, represents a specific iteration of GPT-4, focusing on refining and improving upon the model's capabilities. 

Summary of Distinctive Features of GPT-4 (Turbo / 0613)

• Increased Parameter Count: Rumored to have around 1.76 trillion parameters, GPT-4 offers a significant upgrade in its language processing capabilities.
• Extended Context Window: With a context window of up to 32,768 tokens, GPT-4 can maintain longer conversations and understand the context more effectively than its predecessors. The turbo version could achieve the impressive 131,072 tokens context window being able to understand much longer contexts, such as 200 pages of text.
• Multimodal Capabilities: GPT-4's ability to process both text and images sets it apart, enabling it to perform diverse tasks such as summarizing text from screenshots and understanding visual content.
• System Message Feature: This feature allows users to specify the model's tone and task in natural language, offering a new level of interaction flexibility.

Advantages of GPT-4

• Sophisticated Contextual Understanding: GPT-4's large parameter size and expanded context window contribute to its superior ability to comprehend and generate nuanced and contextually rich text.
• Versatility in Applications: From assisting in coding tasks to creative writing, GPT-4's advanced training and multimodal nature make it highly adaptable across various fields.
• Customizable Interactions: The 'system message' feature enhances user control, allowing for tailored responses and unique conversational styles.

Disadvantages of GPT-4

• Resource Intensity: The model's complexity and size demand substantial computational resources, which may not be feasible for smaller organizations or individual users.
• Undisclosed Technical Details: OpenAI's decision to withhold certain technical details, such as the exact parameter count, may limit the ability of some users to fully understand and optimize the model for specific use cases.

Business Use Cases for GPT-4

• Content Creation and Enhancement: GPT-4's advanced language generation capabilities make it ideal for creating high-quality written content, such as articles, blogs, and reports. Its nuanced understanding of context allows it to produce text that is not only grammatically correct but also contextually rich and engaging.
• Legal and Medical Document Analysis: The model's ability to comprehend complex texts can be leveraged in industries like law and healthcare for analyzing legal documents or medical literature, assisting professionals in these fields by providing summaries, interpretations, and insights.
• Language Translation Services: Given its large context window and nuanced understanding of language, GPT-4 can provide highly accurate translation services, crucial for global businesses operating in multilingual environments.
• Educational Tools and Tutoring: GPT-4 can be used to develop sophisticated educational tools that provide personalized learning experiences, tutoring, and support for students in various subjects, adapting to individual learning styles and needs.
• Customer Service Automation: The model can power advanced chatbots and virtual assistants capable of handling complex customer queries, providing accurate information, and improving overall customer service efficiency.
• Software Development and Code Generation: GPT-4's ability to understand and generate code can assist software developers in automating coding tasks, debugging, and even generating software code, thereby enhancing productivity and innovation in software development.
• Market Analysis and Business Insights: Its ability to analyze large volumes of text can be utilized in market research and business intelligence, providing insights from customer feedback, market trends, and research reports.

Overall, GPT-4 with its exceptional language understanding and generation capabilities, stands as a transformative tool in the realm of artificial intelligence. Its versatility makes it a valuable asset across various industries, from enhancing creative content to powering complex analytical tasks in technical fields. The model's advanced features, such as its large parameter count, extended context window, and multimodal capabilities, enable businesses to harness the power of AI in innovative and impactful ways. GPT-4 is not just a technological advancement; it's a catalyst for efficiency, creativity, and growth in the modern digital landscape.

2. Mistral Medium

• Developer: Mistral
• Release Year: 2024

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Mistral Medium is a language model developed as part of the Mistral AI project. It's designed to provide a balance between performance and computational efficiency, making it an attractive option for a variety of applications.

Distinctive Features of Mistral Medium

• Internal Prototype Model: As of the latest information available, Mistral Medium is based on an internal prototype model. This suggests ongoing development and potential for unique capabilities not yet fully disclosed.
• Multilingual Support: Mistral Medium supports multiple languages, including English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. This multilingual capability extends its usability across diverse linguistic contexts. In addition to multilingual support, Mistral Medium's capabilities potentially extend to advanced applications like speech recognition. 
• Reasoning and Code Generation: It possesses higher reasoning capabilities and can produce and reason about code, making it versatile for both general language tasks and more technical applications like software development.

Advantages of Mistral Medium

• Balanced Performance: Mistral Medium offers a good balance between high-level reasoning and computational efficiency. This makes it suitable for businesses or applications where performance and cost are key considerations.
• Multilingual and Code-Friendly: Its support for multiple languages and ability to handle code-related tasks makes it versatile for global businesses and tech-oriented fields.
• Reasoning Abilities: With a reasonable score in reasoning tasks, Mistral Medium stands out in its ability to handle complex queries and provide logical responses.

Disadvantages of Mistral Medium

• Prototype Nature: Being based on a prototype model, there might be limitations or unexplored areas in its capabilities, which could impact its reliability for certain specialized applications.
• Handling Hallucinations: Mistral Medium has shown to struggle occasionally with hallucinations, which refers to generating fabricated content. This might be a concern in applications where factual accuracy is paramount.

Business Use Cases

• Global Customer Service: Its multilingual capabilities make it ideal for businesses offering customer support in multiple languages.
• Software Development Assistance: The ability to understand and generate code can assist developers in automating certain coding tasks, thereby enhancing productivity.
• Automated Reasoning for Decision Support: Mistral Medium's reasoning capabilities can be leveraged in decision support systems, aiding in complex problem-solving scenarios.

Overall, Mistral Medium represents a promising development in the landscape of language models, offering a blend of multilingual support, reasoning capabilities, and efficiency, suitable for a broad range of applications​

3. Claude (1 - 2.1)

• Developer: Anthropic
• Release Year: 2023

Developed by Anthropic, Claude 2.1 is an advanced version of the Claude language model series, known for its large context window and enhanced truthfulness in outputs.

Distinctive Features of Claude 2.1

• 200K Token Context Window: Claude 2.1 can process up to 200,000 tokens, roughly equating to 150,000 words or over 500 pages, allowing for in-depth interaction with extensive content.
• Reduced Hallucination Rates: It demonstrates a significant reduction in false statements, enhancing its reliability for generating accurate and trustworthy outputs.
• Improved Comprehension and Summarization: Particularly adept at handling long, complex documents like legal texts or financial reports, Claude 2.1 shows a 30% reduction in incorrect answers and lower rates of supporting incorrect claims.
• API Tool Use: This new feature enables Claude 2.1 to interact with external tools and APIs, broadening its application scope.

Advantages of Claude 2.1

• Enhanced Honesty and Accuracy: Its advanced design reduces the likelihood of generating incorrect information, making it more reliable for factual queries.
• Versatility in Document Handling: The extended context window allows Claude 2.1 to analyze and summarize large documents, offering new capabilities in various professional fields.
• Flexibility with System Prompts: Claude 2.1 supports system prompts, enabling users to set specific contexts, enhancing the model's response structure and consistency.

Disadvantages of Claude 2.1

• Processing Time: Due to its large context window, Claude 2.1 may take longer to process extensive prompts.
• Early Development Stage of Tool Use: The experimental nature of its tool use feature might limit its current effectiveness in certain applications.

Business Use Cases

• Complex Contract Analysis and Summarization: Claude 2.1 can be effectively used in the legal sector to analyze and summarize lengthy contracts.
• In-Depth Research and Academic Assistance: Its ability to process and summarize extensive academic papers makes it a valuable tool in research and academic settings.
• Creative and Marketing Content Development: Claude 2.1's advanced language capabilities can assist in generating creative content for marketing and advertising.

Overall, Claude 2.1 represents a significant advancement in large language models, particularly in handling extended contexts and improving the accuracy and honesty of outputs. Its features like the 200K token context window and system prompts make it an invaluable tool for a wide range of applications, especially where depth and reliability of content are crucial​. 

4. Mixtral (MoE) 8x7B

• Developer: [Unknown]
• Release Year: 2024

Mixtral (MoE) 8x7B, developed by Mistral AI, is an advanced language model employing a Sparse Mixture of Experts (SMoE) architecture. This model stands out for its unique structure, combining high-quality performance with efficiency, making it a significant player in the field of artificial intelligence.

Distinctive Features of Mixtral (MoE) 8x7B

• Sparse Mixture of Experts Architecture: Each layer of Mixtral comprises 8 feedforward blocks (experts). For every token, a router network selects two experts to process and combine outputs, enhancing its efficiency and performance.
• Large Parameter Count with Efficient Computation: While having a total of 46.7 billion parameters, Mixtral uses only 12.9 billion parameters per token, balancing the parameter count with computational efficiency.
• Multilingual Capability and Code Generation: Mixtral supports multiple languages including English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and demonstrates strong performance in code generation tasks.
• Instruction-Following Model: The Mixtral 8x7B Instruct variant is optimized for precise instruction following, scoring highly on MT-Bench, a benchmark for model performance.

Advantages of Mixtral (MoE) 8x7B

• Balanced Cost and Performance: Mixtral offers a favorable cost/performance trade-off, outperforming models like Llama 2 70B in most benchmarks while being more efficient.
• Multilingual Support and Code Generation: Its ability to support multiple languages and generate code makes it versatile for diverse applications.
• Instruction Following: The Instruct variant's optimized instruction following makes it highly effective for tasks requiring precise command adherence.

Disadvantages of Mixtral (MoE) 8x7B

• Complex Architecture: The sophisticated MoE design might pose challenges in integration and management for certain applications.
• Prototype Nature: Being a cutting-edge model, it may have certain limitations or unexplored areas in its capabilities.

Business Use Cases

• Global Customer Support: Its multilingual capabilities make it suitable for customer service platforms serving diverse linguistic groups.
• Software Development and Automation: The model's prowess in code generation can aid in software development tasks, enhancing productivity.
• Complex Problem Solving: The model's instruction-following ability and reasoning capabilities can be leveraged in decision support systems and complex problem-solving scenarios.

Overall, Mixtral (MoE) 8x7B represents an innovative approach in the landscape of large language models, offering a blend of high performance, efficiency, and multilingual capabilities. Its unique architecture and the balance it strikes between parameter count and computational efficiency make it a noteworthy model in the realm of artificial intelligence and natural language processing.

5. Gemini Pro (Dev / Pro)

• Developer: Google
• Release Year: 2024

Developed by Google DeepMind, Gemini Pro is a prominent large language model that forms part of the Gemini family of AI models. It's known for its advanced capabilities in natural language processing, outperforming several notable models in various benchmarks.

Distinctive Features of Gemini Pro

• Decoder-Only Transformer Architecture: Gemini Pro is based on a decoder-only transformer model, optimized for efficient training and inference on TPUs.
• Multimodal Input Capability: One of the most remarkable aspects of Gemini Pro is its ability to handle both text and images as input, supporting a multimodal conversational format.
• Large Context Window: The model boasts a context length of 32,768 tokens, facilitating comprehensive understanding and generation of text.
• Multilingual Support: Gemini Pro's dataset is not only multimodal but also multilingual, encompassing a wide range of languages.
• Advanced Natural Language Processing: Gemini Pro is not only designed for generating human-quality text but also excels in its ability to understand natural language in its multimodal interactions. 

Advantages of Gemini Pro

• High Performance in Benchmarks: Gemini Pro has shown to outperform models like GPT-3.5, demonstrating strong capabilities across critical language and model performance benchmarks.
• Versatility: Its broad range of skills makes Gemini Pro a valuable tool for diverse applications, catering to a wide variety of user needs.
• Multimodal and Multilingual Processing: The ability to process text, images, and support multiple languages enhances its applicability in global contexts.

Disadvantages of Gemini Pro

• Complexity and Resource Requirements: As a sophisticated and large model, Gemini Pro might require significant computational resources for optimal performance.
• Limited Accessibility: Being a high-end model, it might not be as easily accessible for smaller organizations or individual developers.

Business Use Cases

• Content Creation and Translation Services: The model can be used for creating and enhancing content in various languages, and for translating text in multilingual business environments.
• Customer Interaction and Support: Gemini Pro can power advanced chatbots and virtual assistants capable of understanding and responding to customer queries in multiple languages.
• Multimedia Content Analysis: Its ability to process both text and images makes it suitable for applications in media and advertising, where analyzing and generating multimedia content is essential.

Overall, Gemini Pro represents a significant advancement in the field of large language models, offering a combination of high performance, versatility, and advanced capabilities in handling multimodal and multilingual data. Its ability to generate human-quality text and process images positions it as a powerful tool for a wide range of applications, from content creation to sophisticated AI-driven customer support systems​​​.

6. Phixtral (MoE) 4x2_8

• Developer: [Unknown]
• Release Year: 2024

Phixtral (MoE) 4x2_8 is a novel Large Language Model developed using a Mixture of Experts (MoE) approach. Inspired by the Mixtral-8x7B-v0.1 architecture and Microsoft's Phi-2 models, this model represents a significant advancement in AI, particularly in its handling of complex language tasks.

Distinctive Features of Phixtral (MoE) 4x2_8

• Mixture of Experts Architecture: Phixtral integrates 2 to 4 expert models, each with 2.8 billion parameters. This design enables it to surpass the performance of individual models, offering enhanced language processing capabilities.
• Quantized Models: The model employs quantization to reduce its memory footprint and increase computation speed without significantly compromising performance.
• Custom Configurations: Users can customize the model setup, such as adjusting the number of experts per token, allowing Phixtral to adapt to various computational environments and use cases.
• Versatility in Applications: The model is not just limited to text; it is adept in various tasks including programming, dialogues, and story writing.

Advantages of Phixtral (MoE) 4x2_8

• Enhanced Performance: By merging multiple expert models, Phixtral demonstrates superior performance in language tasks compared to traditional models.
• Resource Efficiency: The use of quantization and the MoE architecture makes it resource-efficient, and suitable for environments with limited computational capacity.
• Customizability: The ability to fine-tune the model's configuration makes it adaptable to specific requirements and applications.

Disadvantages of Phixtral (MoE) 4x2_8

• Complex Integration: The advanced MoE structure may pose challenges in integration and management in certain setups.
• Prototype Nature: Being at the cutting edge, it may have some unexplored aspects or limitations in its current form.

Business Use Cases

• Software Development and Code Analysis: Phixtral's proficiency in handling programming and coding tasks makes it a valuable tool for software development, aiding in code analysis and automation.
• Dynamic Content Creation: Its versatility allows for dynamic content creation across various domains, including creative writing and dialogue generation.
• AI-Assisted Problem Solving: The model's advanced language processing capabilities can be leveraged in AI-driven problem-solving applications, enhancing efficiency and accuracy.

Overall, Phixtral (MoE) 4x2_8, with its innovative MoE architecture and quantized models, stands as a testament to the evolving landscape of AI. It showcases how combining expert models can lead to enhanced performance and efficiency, setting a new standard in the field of large language models. Its flexibility and adaptability make it a significant tool for a range of applications, from software development to creative content generation​​​​​​.

7. Mistral 7B

• Developer: [Unknown]
• Release Year: 2024

Mistral 7B, a language model with 7.3 billion parameters, is an advanced large language model (LLM) developed by Mistral AI. It stands out for its state-of-the-art (SOTA) capabilities, outperforming larger models like Llama 2 (13 billion parameters) on various benchmarks.

Distinctive Features of Mistral 7B

• High-Performance Architecture: Mistral 7B is a decoder-based language model featuring Sliding Window and Grouped Query Attention mechanisms, allowing for efficient handling of long sequences and faster inference.
• Byte-Fallback BPE Tokenizer: This tokenizer ensures that characters are never mapped to out-of-vocabulary tokens, enhancing the model's robustness.
• Versatile Fine-Tuning: The model supports fine-tuning on specific datasets, enabling customization for targeted applications.

Advantages of Mistral 7B

• Superior Benchmark Performance: Mistral 7B's efficiency and powerful language processing capabilities allow it to outperform larger models in reasoning, mathematics, and code generation tasks.
• Efficient Inference and Cache Management: The implementation of Grouped Query Attention contributes to lower cache size and faster inference, making it suitable for real-time applications.
• Scalability: Its architecture is optimized to effectively handle lengthy sequences, making it adaptable for complex language tasks.

Disadvantages of Mistral 7B

• Resource Intensity: Being a large model, Mistral 7B may require substantial computational resources for training and inference.
• Complexity for Integration: The advanced features and architecture might pose challenges in integration into existing systems or applications.

Business Use Cases

• Advanced Analytics and Research: Mistral 7B's ability to understand and generate complex text makes it ideal for tasks like market research analysis and scientific literature review.
• Automated Content Generation: The model can be used for generating high-quality content for news articles, blogs, or reports.
• Code Generation and Review: Its proficiency in code generation and analysis is beneficial for software development and automated code review processes.

Overall, Mistral 7B represents a significant step forward in the field of large language models, characterized by its high efficiency, advanced architecture, and excellent performance on various benchmarks. Its ability to fine-tune for specific tasks makes it a versatile tool for a wide range of applications, from advanced analytics to content creation and software development​.

8. Phi-2 2.7B

• Developer: Microsoft
• Release Year: 2023

Phi-2, developed by Microsoft, is a transformative language model that stands out for its impressive performance despite its relatively small size of 2.7 billion parameters. It is part of Microsoft's Phi series of models, which aim to achieve high-level AI capabilities within smaller models.

Distinctive Features of Phi-2

• Compact Size with High Performance: Phi-2's 2.7 billion parameters deliver performance comparable to models many times its size, challenging the notion that larger models are always more capable.
• Advanced Training Techniques: Phi-2 was trained on a corpus of 1.4 trillion tokens, leveraging a mix of high-quality synthetic and web-crawled data. This diverse training data, focusing on "textbook-quality" content, underpins its remarkable capabilities.
• Transformer Architecture: Phi-2 utilizes a Transformer architecture with a next-word prediction objective, typical of state-of-the-art language models.

Advantages of Phi-2

• Efficiency and Accessibility: The model's smaller size makes it more resource-efficient and accessible for a broader range of applications.
• Impressive Reasoning and Language Mastery: Despite its size, Phi-2 excels in reasoning, language understanding, math, and coding tasks, often outperforming much larger models.
• Safety and Bias Considerations: Phi-2 has shown improved performance in terms of safety and reduced bias compared to other models, attributed to strategic training data selection.

Disadvantages of Phi-2

• Limited Scale Compared to Larger Models: While highly efficient, it may not reach the depth of understanding seen in the largest models available.
• Dependency on Data Curation: Its performance heavily relies on the quality of the training data, making the process of data selection and curation critical.

Business Use Cases

• Research and Development: Phi-2's ability to efficiently process and generate language can be a valuable asset in research environments, particularly where computational resources are limited.
• Educational Tools: Given its training on educational content, Phi-2 can be effectively used in developing educational tools and applications.
• Code Analysis and Generation: Its performance in coding tasks makes it suitable for assisting in software development and code review processes.

Overall, Phi-2 by Microsoft exemplifies the potential of smaller, more efficient language models to achieve exceptional performance in a variety of tasks. Its design and training approach offer insights into how language models can be optimized for both performance and resource efficiency. Phi-2 represents a significant step in the development of compact yet powerful language models, suitable for a diverse array of applications.

9. LLaMA 2 (7B - 70B)

• Developer: [Unknown]
• Release Year: 2024

LLaMA 2 is a range of large language models developed by Meta, available in three parameter sizes: 7 billion, 13 billion, and 70 billion. Each variant is designed to deliver exceptional performance across various language processing tasks, with an emphasis on openness and accessibility for both research and commercial purposes.

Distinctive Features of LLaMA 2

• Multiple Model Sizes: LLaMA 2 offers models with different parameter sizes, providing flexibility and scalability to suit various computational and application needs.
• Advanced Training Data: It was trained on a substantial dataset of 2 trillion tokens, providing a broad and rich understanding of language nuances.
• Open-Source Accessibility: LLaMA 2 is notable for its open-source nature, allowing widespread access for experimentation and development.
• Fine-Tuning Capabilities: The models can be fine-tuned using supervised fine-tuning (SFT) and reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF) for enhanced performance and safety.

Advantages of LLaMA 2

• Versatility and Scalability: The availability of different model sizes makes LLaMA 2 adaptable to various applications, from small-scale tasks to large, complex challenges.
• Improved Data Handling: The larger context length compared to previous models allows for more accurate and powerful language modeling.
• Open-Source Approach: Its open-source availability promotes widespread innovation and development in the AI community.

Disadvantages of LLaMA 2

• Resource Requirements: The larger models, particularly the 70B variant, require significant computational resources for training and inference.
• Complex Integration for Commercial Use: While open-source, its use in mass-market products with over 700 million users necessitates permission from Meta, adding a layer of complexity for large-scale commercial applications.

Business Use Cases

• AI-Powered Chatbots: LLaMA 2's language generation capabilities make it ideal for creating sophisticated chatbots for both consumer and enterprise usage.
• Research and Development: Its ability to handle a variety of NLP tasks makes it valuable for academic research and AI tool development.
• Language Generation Tools: LLaMA 2 can be utilized for developing tools and applications that require natural language generation, such as virtual assistants and content creation platforms.

Overall, LLaMA 2 represents a significant advancement in the field of large language models, marked by its range of model sizes, advanced training, and open-source accessibility. Its versatility and adaptability make it a valuable asset in various applications, from chatbot development to research and tool creation. LLaMA 2's commitment to open-source AI democratizes access to cutting-edge technology, encouraging widespread innovation and development in the AI field​.

Looking To Use Large Language Models For Your Organization? Let’s Talk. 

The landscape of large language models in 2024 showcases a dynamic and diverse array of AI advancements. From GPT-4's impressive language generation to Phi-2's efficient performance, each model brings unique strengths and limitations, catering to varied applications. This evolution signifies a fundamental shift in our approach to human language, impacting natural language processing and AI extensively. As we harness these groundbreaking technologies, the potential of these models in various fields continues to grow, shaping our digital interactions and creativity."

Interested in unlocking the potential of these advanced LLMs for your business? Contact Us now to explore custom development or fine-tuning of existing large language models.