ChatLLaMA is an open-source chat alternative released by a few Baseten engineers as a weekend project, using Alpaca-7B, a fine-tuned variant of LLaMA designed for chat interfaces. Blueprint now supports fine-tuning FLAN-T5, an instruction-tuned text-to-text-transfer-transformer model developed by Google, allowing users to customize their own large language models with their data. Fine-tuning LLMs enables building specialized generative apps, saving money compared to using generic APIs, and owning one's model. Baseten engineers have been working on various side projects using LLMs and generative AI, including ChatLLaMA, which hit #1 on Hacker News, and other initiatives such as an AI-powered dev infrastructure tool and a quick poetry generator. Baseten has achieved SOC 2 Type II certification and HIPAA compliance, ensuring the security and stability of sensitive data. The company is hosting another AI meetup in April.