Fine-tuning Azure OpenAI models in Azure AI Foundry [Video]

Microsoft Azure’s new AI toolkit makes it easy to customize OpenAI large language models for your applications.

Credit: Zamrznuti tonovi / Shutterstock

Large language models (LLMs) like the OpenAI models used by Azure are general-purpose tools for building many different types of generative AI-powered applications, from chatbots to agent-powered workflows. Much of the work needed to get the most out of these off-the-shelf tools requires prompt engineering, or crafting the prompts used to structure responses.

However, there are limits to prompt engineering. You need to deliver the same prompt every time, along with user requests and all their associated data. This can be a significant issue if you’re pushing the maximum size of a model’s context window, and it can cost you more each time, as services like Azure OpenAI are paid for on a per-token basis. At the same time, complex requests can add latency to operations.

What’s needed is a way to focus the underlying model …