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IBM's Watsonx AI Platform Gets a Prompt-Tuning Tool

IBM adds prompt tuner to the watsonx.ai component of its watsonx enterprise AI platform.

• By David Ramel
• 10/05/2023

IBM is adding a new feature to its enterprise-focused AI and data platform, watsonx, to help users write better prompts for generative AI. The new Tuning Studio, which will be included in the watsonx.ai component of the platform, was developed to help organizations "tune" their foundation models with labeled data for better performance and accuracy, the company said.

Tuning Studio falls under the category of "prompt engineering," which became a hot topic with last year's debut of advanced machine learning large language models (LLMs) used to power constructs such as the ChatGPT chatbot and Microsoft's Copilot AI assistants. The discipline, previously basically unknown, quickly became a hot topic in the IT industry, spawning job offers for top prompt engineers with annual salaries up to $335,000.

IBM's watsonx is an enterprise-focused AI platform the company differentiates from generative AI used for "entertainment," such as writing poems and engaging in human-like conversation. The company debuted the platform in July of this year with three components:

• watsonx.ai: This new studio for foundation models, generative AI and machine learning can help organizations train, validate, tune, and deploy foundation and machine learning models.

• watsonx.data: This is for scaling AI workloads, for all data, anywhere with a fit-for-purpose data store built on an open lakehouse architecture.

• watsonx.governance: This enables responsibility, transparency and explainability in data and AI workflows, helping organizations to direct, manage and monitor its AI activities.

The watsonx.ai component will get Tuning Studio in the third quarter of this year. The other two components of the platform will also receive improvements:

Watsonx.data:

• Generative AI: Planned generative AI capabilities in watsonx.data will help users discover, augment, visualize and refine data for AI through a self-service experience powered by a conversational, natural language interface. The company plans to issue a tech preview in the fourth quarter of this year.
• Vector database capability: IBM plans to integrate a vector database capability into watsonx.data to support watsonx.ai retrieval augmented generation use cases, again in a tech preview in the fourth quarter.

Watsonx.governance:

• Model risk governance for generative AI: This is yet another tech preview, in which clients can explore capabilities for automated collection and documentation of foundation model details and model risk governance capabilities. IBM said these help stakeholders view relevant metrics in dashboards of their enterprise-wide AI workflows with approvals, so humans are engaged at the right times.

The watsonx platform will also be augmented with several AI assistants to help users with things like application modernization, customer care, and human resources. And the company plans to embed watsonx.ai tech across its hybrid cloud software and infrastructure products.

"These enhancements include a technical preview for watsonx.governance, new generative AI data services coming to watsonx.data, and the planned integration of watsonx.ai foundation models across select software and infrastructure products," the company said in a Sept. 7 news release.