Hello David Yoon ,
thanks for your question! Azure AI Foundry supports creating and customizing models through fine-tuning rather than training from scratch. Here’s how you can approach it:
Key Steps to Create a Custom Model
- Prepare Your Data
- Collect a clean dataset relevant to your use case (classification, summarisation, domain-specific tasks).
- Split into training and validation sets in JSONL format for text-based models.
- Choose Fine-Tuning Method
- In Azure AI Foundry portal, navigate to Model Catalog → Azure OpenAI or other providers.
- Select a base model (e.g., GPT‑4.1 or GPT‑4.1‑mini for smaller tasks).
- Use LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) for efficient fine-tuning—this reduces cost and speeds up training.
- Run Fine-Tuning Job
- Options: Portal, Python SDK, or REST API.
- Monitor job status in the portal and review logs for any errors.
- Deploy Your Custom Model
- After fine-tuning completes, deploy via Azure AI Foundry Models.
- Choose serverless API or managed compute based on your performance and cost needs.
- Test and Iterate
- Use the Playground in Foundry to validate outputs.
- Adjust training data or parameters if results don’t meet expectations.
Benefits of Fine-Tuning
- Improves accuracy for domain-specific tasks.
- Reduces token usage and latency compared to prompt engineering.
- Enables compliance with organizational tone and policies
If you need advanced control (like embeddings or multi-agent orchestration), you can integrate Azure AI Foundry Agent Service or use Azure Machine Learning pipelines for complex workflows.
References:
Fine-tune models with Azure AI Foundry and Customize a model in AI Foundry.
I hope this clears things up! If you need any further assistance or run into any issues, please don’t hesitate to reach out I’ll be happy to help.
Thankyou!