(Reuters) -Microsoft on Tuesday launched a lightweight artificial intelligence model, as it looks to attract a wider client base with cost-effective options.
The new version called Phi-3-mini is the first of the three small language models (SLM (NASDAQ:SLM)) to be released by the company, as it stakes its future on a technology that is expected to have a wide-ranging impact on the world and the way people work.
"Phi-3 is not slightly cheaper, it's dramatically cheaper, we're talking about a 10x cost difference compared to the other models out there with similar capabilities," said Sébastien Bubeck, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)'s vice president of GenAI research.
SLMs are designed to perform simpler tasks, making it easier for use by companies with limited resources, the company said.
Phi-3-mini will be available immediately on Microsoft cloud service platform Azure's AI model catalog, machine learning model platform Hugging Face, and Ollama, a framework for running models on a local machine, the company said.
The SLM will also be available on Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA)'s software tool Nvidia Inference Microservices (NIM) and has also been optimized for its graphics processing units (GPUs).
Last week, Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in UAE-based AI firm G42. It has also previously partnered with French startup Mistral AI to make their models available through its Azure cloud computing platform.