Microsoft today announced it is working with the German pharmaceutical-and-agricultural group and other companies on specialized AI models fine-tuned on industry-specific data. The companies can now list and monetize those models on Microsoft’s online model catalog. For Bayer that means an AI model fine-tuned with its data and designed to provide answers on agronomy and crop protection is available to be licensed by its distributors, new AgTech startups, and even potentially competitors.
The model can answer questions about ingredients in an insecticide or whether a product could be applied to cotton, for example. Microsoft expects this new approach, built on its Phi family of small language models and preloaded with industry knowledge, will accelerate enterprise generative AI adoption, a yearslong effort built on the understanding that off-the-shelf AI models often don’t cut it for business needs. Companies now find it critical to augment today’s general models with more industry-specific or business-specific data if they’re going to be useful.
More information:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bayer-microsoft-generative-ai-90754f54