Meta plans to stop naming its AI projects after fruit

Meta is reportedly retiring the fruit names it has used for its AI projects. Business Insider says the company has decided internally to switch to more serious names, citing a person familiar with the matter. Meta has not confirmed the change, and no new naming style has been announced.

What changed

A codename is an internal project name used before a product launches. Meta used Avocado for a language model and Mango for an image-generation model. Watermelon was the codename for Wonder Full, which Meta calls its first cutting-edge "frontier" model, meaning one among the most advanced AI systems. The report calls the move a branding decision, since fruit names no longer fit Meta's ambitions.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted at this last month on the Cheeky Pint podcast. "We're out of fruits," he said. Meta's AI chief, Alexandr Wang, joked that durian could be next, though not one the company would want to pick.

What is not known yet

Meta has not said what will replace the fruit names or when. Nothing changes in your apps today. Other AI companies have their own habits. OpenAI reportedly used Strawberry and Garlic internally, Google's Nano Banana reached the public, and Anthropic uses Opus, Sonnet and Haiku for its Claude models.