Microsoft partners with industry leaders to offer vertical SLMs [Video]

Teaming up with industry partners such as Bayer and Rockwell Automation, Microsoft is adding pre-trained small language models to its Azure AI catalog aimed at highly specialized use cases.

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At its Microsoft Ignite 2024 show in Chicago this week, Microsoft and industry partner experts showed off the power of small language models (SLMs) with a new set of fine-tuned, pre-trained AI models using industry-specific data.

“While organizations around the world recognize the value and potential of AI, for AI to be truly effective, it must be tailored to specific industry needs,” said Satish Thomas, corporate VP of business and industry solutions at Microsoft, in a blog post.

SLMs are AI models that are smaller in scale and scope than large language models (LLMs), and are intended for specialized use cases. They’re also typically trained on more specific and higher quality datasets than LLMs, and because they’re more compact and efficient than LLMs, when used in …