Oracle Corp., the world’s largest database company, today introduced its long-awaited Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Generative AI service, which includes several breakthroughs that will allow large corporations to take advantage of the most recent advances in generative AI technology.
The new OCI Generative AI service is a fully managed and cloud-hosted offering that allows organizations to connect sophisticated large language models like Meta Platform’s open-source Llama 2 and Cohere Inc.’s proprietary algorithms with their existing systems. Companies should be able to automate many of the manual business activities that individuals now do.
According to Oracle, the OCI Generative AI service supports over 100 languages, improves cluster management for graphics processing units, and offers customizable fine-tuning options.
Oracle stated that its new service will allow such models to be consumed through application programming interface calls for tasks such as text generation, summarization, and semantic similarity. Customers will be able to securely embed generative AI within their existing technology stacks, with strict data security and governance rules in place.
In June, the business unveiled the OCI Generative AI service as an alternative to Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service, which enables clients to run huge language models that conversationally respond to human inputs.
Even while Llama 2 and Cohere’s AI models are well-known for their strengths, most firms won’t find much use for them unless they can improve and hone them using internal data. Customers can use the OCI Generative AI Agents service to improve the LLM’s capabilities by providing their own data.
The OCI Generative AI Agents service, which is now in beta testing, combines retrieval-augmented generation approaches to fine-tune generative AI models, allowing them to offer more relevant, contextualized responses. It gives LLMs access to a RAG agent that uses enterprise search capabilities based on OCI Open Search to help them get the most up-to-date information for their responses and predictions.
A broader variety of data search and aggregation technologies, such as Oracle Database 23c with AI Vector Search and MySQL HeatWave with Vector Store, are planned to be integrated by the company, even while the initial release supports RAG through OCI OpenSearch. The solution will also provide prebuilt agent actions for the company’s software-as-a-service applications, such as Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite, Oracle NetSuite, and Oracle Cerner.
Oracle said the OCI Generative AI service is accessible in different Oracle Cloud regions and may also be accessed on-premises via the OCI Dedicated Region platform. The service will also be connected with Oracle’s suite of cloud-based business applications, which includes Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning, Human Capital Management, Supply Chain Management, and Customer Experiences. In addition, Oracle said that its generative AI service will be available through its Autonomous Database Select AI feature.
In a related update, Oracle announced that it is increasing the capabilities of its OCI Data Science platform by introducing a new AI Quick Actions tool in beta next month, which will enable no-code access to several open-source LLMs. Customers will be able to use the capability to develop, train, deploy, and administer LLMs created with open-source libraries such as Hugging Face Inc.’s Transformers or PyTorch.
Greg Pavlik, OCI’s senior vice president of AI and data management, stated that the company is focusing on leveraging generative AI to solve real-world business use cases and pave the road for wider enterprise adoption of the technology. “To do this, we are embedding AI across all layers of the technology stack by integrating generative AI into our applications and converged database and offering new LLMs and managed services,” he went on to say. “Instead of providing a tool kit that requires assembling, we are offering a powerful suite of prebuilt generative AI services and features that work together to help customers solve business problems smarter and faster.”
According to Andy Thurai, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research Inc., the new service, with its API-based access, could be an appealing alternative for some organizations because it is available both in the cloud and on-premises, which is unusual. However, the analyst noted that the service has several restrictions, including the fact that it only supports LLMs from Cohere and Meta’s Llama 2, and it is aimed at a limited set of use cases, such as text production and summarization.
“In terms of its overall generative AI offerings, Oracle remains far behind Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, which provide greater functionality and more flexible deployment options,” he noted. “However, the possibility to link with their ERP, HCM, SCM, and CX apps running on OCI might make this service appealing to several organizations, if priced correctly. But if not, AWS may easily win because its generative AI services are now well ahead of Oracle’s.
Oracle wants to position itself as a viable choice for businesses looking to develop generative AI, and the debut of this new service should assist with that. Already, the startup is aiming to become a big player in infrastructure, offering cloud-based access to Nvidia Corp.’s most powerful GPUs.
