Model Mondays S2E13: Open Source Models (Hugging Face)
1. Weekly Highlights 1. Weekly Highlights Here are the key updates we covered in the Season 2 finale: O1 Mini Reinforcement Fine-Tuning (GA): Fine-tune models with as few as ~100 samples using built-in Python code graders. Azure Live Interpreter API (Preview): Real-time speech-to-speech translation supporting 76 input languages and 143 locales with near human-level latency. Agent Factory – Part 5: Connecting agents using open standards like MCP (Model Context Protocol) and A2A (Agent-to-Agent protocol). Ask Ralph by Ralph Lauren: A retail example of agentic AI for conversational styling assistance, built on Azure OpenAI and Foundry’s agentic toolset. VS Code August Release: Brings auto-model selection, stronger safety guards for sensitive edits, and improved agent workflows through new agents.md support. 2. Spotlight – Open Source Models in Azure AI Foundry Guest: Jeff Boudier, VP of Product at Hugging Face Jeff showcased the deep integration between the Hugging Face community and Azure AI Foundry, where developers can access over 10 000 open-source models across multiple modalities—LLMs, speech recognition, computer vision, and even specialized domains like protein modeling and robotics. Demo Highlights Discover models through Azure AI Foundry’s task-based catalog filters. Deploy directly from Hugging Face Hub to Azure with one-click deployment. Explore Use Cases such as multilingual speech recognition and vision-language-action models for robotics. Jeff also highlighted notable models, including: SmoLM3 – a 3 B-parameter model with hybrid reasoning capabilities Qwen 3 Coder – a mixture-of-experts model optimized for coding tasks Parakeet ASR – multilingual speech recognition Microsoft Research protein-modeling collection MAGMA – a vision-language-action model for robotics Integration extends beyond deployment to programmatic access through the Azure CLI and Python SDKs, plus local development via new VS Code extensions. 3. Customer Story – DraftWise (BUILD 2025 Segment) The finale featured a customer spotlight on DraftWise, where CEO James Ding shared how the company accelerates contract drafting with Azure AI Foundry. Problem Legal contract drafting is time-consuming and error-prone. Solution DraftWise uses Azure AI Foundry to fine-tune Hugging Face language models on legal data, generating contract drafts and redline suggestions. Impact Faster drafting cycles and higher consistency Easy model management and deployment with Foundry’s secure workflows Transparent evaluation for legal compliance 4. Community Story – Hugging Face & Microsoft The episode also celebrated the ongoing collaboration between Hugging Face and Microsoft and the impact of open-source AI on the global developer ecosystem. Community Benefits Access to State-of-the-Art Models without licensing barriers Transparent Performance through public leaderboards and benchmarks Rapid Innovation as improvements and bug fixes spread quickly Education & Empowerment via tutorials, docs, and active forums Responsible AI Practices encouraged through community oversight 5. Key Takeaways Open Source AI Is Here to Stay Azure AI Foundry and Hugging Face make deploying, fine-tuning, and benchmarking open models easier than ever. Community Drives Innovation: Collaboration accelerates progress, improves transparency, and makes AI accessible to everyone. Responsible AI and Transparency: Open-source models come with clear documentation, licensing, and community-driven best practices. Easy Deployment & Customization: Azure AI Foundry lets you deploy, automate, and customize open models from a single, unified platform. Learn, Build, Share: The open-model ecosystem is a great place for students, developers, and researchers to learn, build, and share their work. Sharda's Tips: How I Wrote This Blog For this final recap, I focused on capturing the energy of the open source AI movement and the practical impact of Hugging Face and Azure AI Foundry collaboration. I watched the livestream, took notes on the demos and interviews, and linked directly to official resources for models, docs, and community sites. Here’s my Copilot prompt for this episode: "Generate a technical blog post for Model Mondays S2E13 based on the transcript and episode details. Focus on open source models, Hugging Face, Azure AI Foundry, and community workflows. Include practical links and actionable insights for developers and students! Learn & Connect Explore Open Models in Azure AI Foundry Hugging Face Leaderboard Responsible AI in Azure Machine Learning Llama-3 by Meta Hugging Face Community Azure AI Documentation About Model Mondays Model Mondays is your weekly Azure AI learning series: 5-Minute Highlights: Latest AI news and product updates 15-Minute Spotlight: Demos and deep dives with product teams 30-Minute AMA Fridays: Ask anything in Discord or the forum Start building: Watch Past Replays Register For AMA Recap Past AMAs Join The Community Don’t build alone! The Azure AI Developer Community is here for real-time chats, events, and support: Join the Discord Explore the Forum About Me I'm Sharda, a Gold Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador focused on cloud and AI. Find me on GitHub, Dev.to, Tech Community, and LinkedIn. In this blog series, I share takeaways from each week’s Model Mondays livestream.Skill Up On The Latest AI Models & Tools on Model Mondays - Season 2 starts Jun 16!
Quick Links To RSVP for each episode: EP1: Advanced Reasoning Models: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25905/ EP2: Model Context Protocol: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25906/ EP3: SLMs (and Reasoning): https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25907/ Get All The Details: https://aka.ms/model-mondays Azure AI Foundry offers the best model choice Did you manage to catch up on all the talks from Microsoft Build 2025? If, like me, you are interested in building AI-driven applications on Azure, you probably started by looking at what’s new in Azure AI Foundry. I recommend you read Asha Sharma’s post for the top 10 things you need to know in this context. And it starts with New Models & Smarter Models! New Models | Azure AI Foundry now has 11,000+ models to choose from – including frontier models from partner providers, and thousands of open-source community variants from Hugging Face. But how do you pick the right one for your needs? Smarter Models | It's not just about model selection, but about the effort required to use the model and validate the results. How can you improve the user experience and build trust and confidence in your customers? Solutions like Model Router and Azure AI Evaluations SDK help. The Challenge? | New models, features, and tools being released daily - the information overload is real. How do we keep up with the latest updates – and skill up on model choices? Say Hello to Model Mondays! Model Mondays is a weekly series with a livestream on Microsoft Reactor (on Mondays) and a follow-up AMA on Azure AI Foundry Discord (on Fridays). Here are the three links to know: Visit the Model Mondays repo: https://aka.ms/model-mondays Watch the Model Mondays playlist: https://aka.ms/model-mondays/playlist Join #model-mondays on Discord: https://aka.ms/model-mondays/discord Visit the playlist or repo to catch up on replays from Season 1 (above). Learn about topics like reasoning models, visual generative models, open-source AI, forecasting models, and local AI development with Visual Studio AI Toolkit. Each 30-minute episode consists of: 5-min Highlights. Catch up on top model-related news from the previous week. 15-min Spotlight. Get a deep dive into a specific model, model family, or related tool. Q&A. Ask questions on chat during the livestream, or join the AMA on Discord on Friday. Register Now to Join Us for Season 2! Microsoft Build showed us that the model catalog is expanding quickly – and so are the tools that are available, to help you select, customize, and evaluate, your AI application. In Season 2, we’re going to dive deeper into advanced topics in models and tools. Some of the topics that we hope to cover include: Advanced Reasoning Models – Deep Research, Visual Reasoning and more. Model Context Protocol – What it is, examples of MCP Servers today. SLMs and Reasoning – We dive into the Phi-4 model ecosystem for insights. Foundry Labs – Explore projects like Magentic-UI and MCP Server. Open-Source Models – Explore the 10K+ community models from Hugging Face. Edge Models – Explore Foundry Local and the rise of on-device AI capabiltiies. Models for AI Agents – Explore the Agent Catalog samples like Red-Teaming Model Playgrounds – Explore Image, Video, Agent, Chat, Language playgrounds Advanced Fine Tuning – Learn to fine GPT models, and use the Foundry Portal AI Developer Experience – Get productive with AI Toolkit & VS Code Extension pack Our first three episodes below are open for registration right now! EP1: Advanced Reasoning Models: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25905/ EP2: Model Context Protocol: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25906/ EP3: SLMs (and Reasoning): https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/25907/ Let's build our model IQ and get starting developing AI applications on Azure! Want to Build AI Apps - and need resources to accelerate your journey? Chat with us on Azure AI Foundry Discord - https://aka.ms/aifoundrydiscord Provide feedback on our Discussion Forum - https://aka.ms/aifoundryforum Skill up with the Azure AI Foundry Learn Course - http://aka.ms/learnatbuild Review the Azure AI Foundry Documentation - http://aka.ms/AzureAI Download and explore the Azure AI Foundry SDK - http://aka.ms/aifoundrysdkFrom Local to Global: A Journey with Co-op Translator to Share Learning Resources Worldwide
I used the Co-op Translator to translate my English presentation materials from an MLSA session into Punjabi (pa) and Hindi (hi), allowing students to access content in their preferred languages. You can view the translated results in my GitHub repository. This guide covers how I integrated Azure services to provide multilingual support, configuring the project environment, and using the Co-op Translator Python package to handle both markdown and image translation.Generative AI for Beginners - A 12-Lesson Course
Are you fascinated by the world of Artificial Intelligence and its endless possibilities? Are you a beginner eager to dive into the realm of Generative AI? If so, you're in the right place! In this blog post, we're excited to introduce you to a comprehensive 12-lesson course designed to teach you everything you need to know to start building Generative AI applicationsAutogen: Microsoft’s Open-Source Tool for Streamlining Development
Are you a technical student looking for a tool that can help you generate high-quality code, documentation, and tests for your projects? If so, you might want to check out AutoGen a framework that enables development of large language model (LLM) applications using multiple agents that can converse with each other to solve tasks.Empowering the AI Generation: Microsoft's Open-Source Initiative
In a world increasingly driven by open collaboration and community-driven innovation, Microsoft has undergone a remarkable transformation. The tech giant is on a mission to provide students, startups, AI developers, and entrepreneurs with the tools and resources they need to build groundbreaking solutions. Embracing open source is at the heart of this journey.Unleashing the Entrepreneurial Spirit: Microsoft's Open-Source Solutions on Display
Open At Microsoft stands as a beacon illuminating the path for students, developers with entrepreneurial aspirations, and startup leaders eager to harness AI's potential. But what makes this show truly exceptional is its spotlight on Microsoft product teams as they pioneer open-source solutions.
