July 9 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms ( META ) on Thursday

released long-awaited developer access to its Muse Spark AI

alongside an upgraded version, pitting it directly against the

business models of Anthropic and OpenAI in charging for use of

its AI model.

The social media giant touted Muse Spark 1.1 as its most

capable model for real-world coding and agentic tasks, part of a

broader mission the company is pitching of delivering "personal

superintelligence."

Meta said the upgraded model can write and debug code, use

software and external tools, understand text, images and video,

and carry out complex multi-step tasks with less human

intervention.

In April, Meta debuted Muse Spark, the first text and

reasoning AI model from the superintelligence team it assembled

last year to close the gap with rivals in the heated competition

for AI supremacy.

Meta was testing the ​Application Programming Interface with

partners in a private preview during its launch. The API is a

key element for AI systems, acting like a digital bridge for

developers that allows them to use the model's capabilities in

their own software systems.

"If Muse Spark 1.1 is genuinely competitive with Claude and

Codex on coding, then Meta may finally have a much clearer

monetization bridge from AI models to paid developer tools,"

said Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at Futurum Equities.

Developers in the United States can now access Muse Spark in

public preview on Meta Model API, letting them test prompts,

compare outputs and prototype integrations.

Those who sign up for the API receive $20 in free credits to

test the model before switching to pay-as-you-go pricing.

"Our focus is on delivering strong agentic and multimodal

models at very low cost," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a

post on X.

The access is priced at $1.25 per million input tokens and

$4.25 per million output tokens, above OpenAI's entry-level

GPT-5 mini and Anthropic's low-cost Claude Haiku 4.5, but below

Anthropic's higher-end Claude Sonnet 4.6 model.

The new model is now available in Thinking mode in the Meta

AI app and on the website. It is also expected to replace

existing Llama models powering chatbots on WhatsApp, Instagram,

Facebook and Meta's collection of smart glasses.

The release follows a company announcement on Tuesday

expanding generative AI tools across its apps by rolling out

Muse Image, its first image-generation model from Meta

Superintelligence Labs.