April 23 (Reuters) - Microsoft ( MSFT ) on Tuesday

announced a cost-effective, small language artificial

intelligence model that can perform tasks such as content

creation and create social media posts while using smaller

amounts of data.

The company introduced an AI model called Phi-3-mini, which

can outperform models twice its size across a variety of

benchmarks that evaluate language, coding and math capabilities,

it said in a statement.

Smaller AI models are designed to perform simpler tasks,

making it easier for use by companies with limited resources,

Microsoft ( MSFT ) said.

A business could use Phi-3 to summarize the main points of a

long document, extract relevant insights and industry trends

from market research reports, Microsoft ( MSFT ) added.

Phi-3-mini will be available immediately on Microsoft ( MSFT ) 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, the company said.

Last week, Microsoft ( MSFT ) invested $1.5 billion in UAE-based AI

firm G42. It has also previously partnered with French startup

Mistral AI to make their models available through its Azure

cloud computing platform.