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

launched a lightweight artificial intelligence model, as it

looks to attract a wider client base with cost-effective

options.

The new version called Phi-3-mini is the first of the three

small language models (SLM) to be released by the company, as it

stakes its future on a technology that is expected to have a

wide-ranging impact on the world and the way people work.

"Phi-3 is not slightly cheaper, it's dramatically cheaper,

we're talking about a 10x cost difference compared to the other

models out there with similar capabilities," said Sébastien

Bubeck, Microsoft's ( MSFT ) vice president of GenAI research.

SLMs are designed to perform simpler tasks, making it easier

for use by companies with limited resources, the company said.

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.

(Reporting by Mrinmay Dey, Abinaya Vijayaraghavan and Zaheer

Kachwala in Bengaluru, Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing

by Rashmi Aich and Anil D'Silva)