Foundation Model

A large AI model trained on broad data at scale that can be adapted to a wide range of downstream tasks through fine-tuning or prompting. A foundation model is a large-scale, general-purpose AI model trained on diverse data that serves as a shared base for many downstream applications. The term was coined by researchers at the Stanford Center for Research on Foundation Models (CRFM) in 2021.

Foundation models are characterised by emergence — capabilities that arise at scale and were not explicitly trained for — and homogenisation — the tendency for a single model to become the base for many downstream applications.

Foundation Model is a foundational concept in Model Architecture. A large AI model trained on broad data at scale that can be adapted to a wide range of downstream tasks through fine-tuning or prompting.