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AI & Machine Learning · Foundational

Foundation Model (FM)

A large model pretrained on broad data that can be adapted to many downstream tasks.

Definition

Foundation models, including LLMs and multimodal models, serve as general-purpose bases that are customized via prompting, RAG, fine-tuning or continued pretraining. Cloud platforms offer them through catalogs such as Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft Foundry Models and Vertex AI Model Garden.

Exam tip

Choose the least-effort customization that meets requirements: prompting, then RAG, then fine-tuning, then pretraining.

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