Microsoft Puts the PR in AI (Premium)

Overly reliant on OpenAI and facing a coming generation of on-device AI that it can't control, Microsoft's latest small language model (SLM) is most notable for the PR offensive that accompanies it.

Phi-3 Mini is an SLM that runs on locally on smartphones and rivals the performance of the ChatGPT 3.5 and Mixtral 8x7B previous-generation large language models (LLMs) that run in cloud datacenters. This is interesting for the same reasons that any local SLM is interesting. But Phi-3 Mini enters a market crowded with capable competitors, many of which aren't saddled by the software giant's dominant monopolistic baggage and questionable OpenAI partnership. And so Microsoft has flexed its muscles in a way that few competitors can by engaging in an expansive PR campaign to spread the word, not just in the tech space, but with mainstream news too.

The message: Microsoft isn't just a major player in AI, Microsoft is still leading this space.

Officially, Microsoft announced Phi-3 Mini to the world with a whimper, via an academic whitepaper that few will read and even fewer could possibly understand. But behind the scenes, Microsoft has shouted this otherwise innocuous news to the rooftops by reaching out fair and wide, not just to all the usual tech sites and blogs, but more notably to mainstream news publications like The New York Times and Reuters, to explain why Phi-3 Mini is notable and see whether they might promote this advance for them.

That they all took the bait is rather impressive. Each is essentially promoting Microsoft's internal AI prowess for it at a time when the company is facing an uncertain future in a suddenly crowded field of AI advances that seem to arrive each week, and usually from other companies and organizations. Microsoft may have jumpstarted the AI era that OpenAI ChatGPT-4 created, but it seems to be getting swept up in it now, too, as the rest of the industry jumps onboard.

"The smallest Phi-3 model can fit on a smartphone, so it can be used even if it’s not connected to the internet," The New York Times explains in its lengthy report. "And it can run on the kinds of chips that power regular computers, rather than more expensive processors made by Nvidia." The publication also helpfully notes that Microsoft is open sourcing Phi-3, just as Google and Meta are doing with their SLMs.

None of that is particularly unique. But then again, that's true of most of the new LLMs and SLMs that seem to appear almost every other day now. The claims are always the same: Better datasets, better training, better performance, and better capabilities, followed by rote comparisons with current and previous generation language models from the perceived market leaders (usually OpenAI). It's all happening so fast that it's difficult if not impossible to keep up with the advances. Which is exactly why Microsoft courted the press so gratuitously for this SLM. It would have otherwise been lost in the mix, ignored.

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