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Microsoft Phi

Rating:

4.6 / 5.0

Tags

microsoft, phi, slm, small language model, open source, on-device ai, edge ai, mit license, phi-3, phi-4, microsoft research

Categories:
Machine learning and neural networks
Creator Microsoft Research
Date 2023-06-01
Platforms Hugging Face, Local, On-premise, Cloud, Mobile
Status Live
Website microsoft.com
Price Model Open Source
Sections:
Model Training

Pricing Details

Free, open-source models. Distributed under the MIT license, which permits commercial use.

Features

Family of Small Language Models (SLMs), High performance at a small size, Optimized for edge devices, Open-source (MIT license), Various sizes and modalities (Phi-2, Phi-3, Phi-4), High-quality training data

Integrations

Hugging Face Transformers, PyTorch, ONNX Runtime, Azure AI

Preview

The Microsoft Phi model series represents a breakthrough in AI efficiency, proving that quality over quantity matters in training data. Instead of training on trillions of internet tokens, Microsoft researchers used carefully selected, high-quality data. This has resulted in surprisingly compact yet powerful models. Starting with Phi-1 and Phi-2, which showed impressive reasoning and coding abilities, Microsoft continued to develop the line. The Phi-3 models, released in several sizes (mini, small, medium), became even more accessible and powerful, offering an excellent balance for on-device applications. The latest addition, Phi-4 (February 2025), took the family to a new level by introducing multimodal capabilities (text, image, audio processing) and improved logical reasoning, all while maintaining the philosophy of compactness. Thanks to the permissive MIT license, Phi models are actively used to create cost-effective and private AI solutions.