Microsoft Azure AI Studio provides Llama 2, GPT-4 Turbo V as companies

Microsoft, one of many greatest winners of the generative AI growth to date because of its early backing of OpenAI and integration of the latter startup’s tech into Bing, Azure, and varied different companies, has been making an attempt to keep away from placing all of its AI eggs in a single basket.

Immediately, the firm introduced that it’s making Meta Platforms’ rival open-sourced AI mannequin Llama 2 out there in Azure AI Studio, its cloud platform AI clearinghouse, within the type of a “model-as-a-service.”

Understanding AI models-as-a-service

Much like the now-old acronym of SaaS (software-as-a-service), MaaS presents prospects the power to make use of AI fashions reminiscent of Llama 2 on-demand over the net when wanted with minimal setup. They gained’t need to undergo all the difficulty of putting in it on their very own cloud server house, personal cloud, hybrid cloud, or different places. Even with Microsoft specialists serving to and educated IT personnel, this generally is a non-trivial job for enterprises.

As John Montgomery, Microsoft Company Vice President of Program Administration for its AI Platform efforts defined in a weblog submit:

“In Azure AI, you’ve got been in a position to deploy fashions onto your personal infrastructure for a very long time – merely go into the mannequin catalog, choose the mannequin to deploy and a VM to deploy it on and also you’re off to the races. However not each buyer desires to consider working infrastructure, which is why at Ignite we launched Fashions as a Service, which operates fashions as API endpoints that you just name, a lot the best way you may name the Azure OpenAI Service.

Immediately, we’re making Meta’s Llama 2 out there in Fashions as a Service by Azure AI in public preview, enabling Llama-2-7b (Textual content Technology), Llama-2-7b-Chat (Chat Completion), Llama-2-13b (Textual content Technology), Llama-2-13b-Chat (Chat Completion), Llama-2-70b (Textual content Technology), and Llama-2-70b-Chat (Chat Completion).”

Hedging AI bets whereas giving prospects extra decisions

Providing this big selection of various open-source Llama fashions looks as if a wise transfer on Microsoft’s half, increasing the alternatives of AI for Azure cloud storage and repair prospects and giving them a far lower-cost possibility (the fashions themselves are free, although varied implementations will not be) to Microsoft’s buddy OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and 4 fashions.

In spite of everything, Llama 2 arguably gained the 12 months relating to generative AI since it’s the popular open-source possibility for a lot of customers and enterprises.

It follows stories of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who was stated to be shocked and livid concerning the prior OpenAI board’s abrupt resolution to terminate CEO Sam Altman again in November earlier than in the end re-hiring him, stating that he desires to unfold Microsoft’s AI bets extra broadly.

OpenAI nonetheless well-represented

However that doesn’t imply that OpenAI is being ignored within the chilly with right this moment’s bulletins. Quite the opposite: Montgomery additionally shared the information that OpenAI’s newest publicly accessible AI mannequin, GPT-4 Turbo with Imaginative and prescient — which provides the AI the capabilities of analyzing and describing images and visible materials — can also be now out there to prospects of Azure within the Azure AI Studio.

Already, prospects reminiscent of Instacart and WPP are utilizing this mannequin, in accordance with Montgomery.

And, the Azure AI Studio consists of instruments for fine-tuning all of the fashions supplied.

At this level, because the AI cloud wars proceed to rage on, the one actual query is: what number of fashions will Microsoft be capable of add to Azure AI Studio? Is Mistral or Deci subsequent?

The information right this moment additionally follows Microsoft’s launch earlier this week of Phi-2, its personal small language mannequin (SML), although that is just for analysis functions and might’t be used for industrial instances. Nevertheless, Llama-2 and GPT-4 Turbo with Imaginative and prescient can.