Microsoft has launched a lightweight artificial intelligence model called Phi-3-mini, which is the first of three small language models (SLMs)

Microsoft has launched a lightweight artificial intelligence model called Phi-3-mini, which is the first of three small language models (SLMs) to be released by the company. SLMs are designed to perform simpler tasks, making it easier for companies with limited resources to use. Phi-3-mini is dramatically cheaper than other models with similar capabilities, with a 10x cost difference. It 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.

Microsoft has also invested $1.5 billion in UAE-based AI firm G42 and partnered with French startup Mistral AI to make their models available through its Azure cloud computing platform.

In a related development, Meta has released the latest entry in its Llama series of open generative AI models: Llama 3. The new models, Llama 3 8B and Llama 3 70B, are described as a "major leap" compared to the previous-gen Llama models, with higher parameter counts that make them among the best-performing generative AI models available today. The Llama 3 models have shown superior performance on popular AI benchmarks like MMLU, ARC, and DROP, outperforming other open models such as Mistral’s Mistral 7B and Google’s Gemma 7B on at least nine benchmarks.

Meta has also developed new data-filtering pipelines to boost the quality of its model training data and updated its pair of generative AI safety suites, Llama Guard and CybersecEval, to prevent the misuse of and unwanted text generations from Llama 3 models and others. The company is also releasing a new tool, Code Shield, designed to detect code from generative AI models that might introduce security vulnerabilities. However, filtering isn't foolproof, and tools like Llama Guard, CybersecEval, and Code Shield only go so far. Meta's goal is to make Llama 3 multilingual and multimodal, have longer context, and continue to improve overall performance across core large language model capabilities such as reasoning and coding.

Microsoft has also invested $1.5 billion in UAE-based AI firm G42