FILE PHOTO: Microsoft has announced a new small language model called Fara-7B, which can be used to perform agentic tasks directly on the user’s device.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Microsoft has announced a new small language model called Fara-7B, which can be used to perform agentic tasks directly on the user’s device. Termed as a Computer Use Agent (CUA) model, Fara-7B uses computer interfaces like the mouse and keyboard to achieve state-of-the-art performance, the company has claimed, that is on par with bigger agentic AI systems powered by much bigger large language models.
Because the data is stored locally on device, the latency is reduced and the privacy is improved, the company noted.
“Users can build and test agentic experiences beyond pure research—automating everyday web tasks like filling out forms, searching for information, booking travel, or managing accounts,” a blog post by Microsoft said.
Fara-7B visually observes a webpage and then scrolls or types and clicks, having made predictions on the coordinates.
The blog post also added that it was recommended that Fara-7B was run in a sandbox environment and monitored while also avoiding any sensitive data or high-risk areas.
The open-weight small language model is available on Microsoft Foundry and the Hugging Face platform under an MIT license. There’s also a quantised and silicon-optimised version of the model which will be made available later via Copilot + PCs powered by Windows 11.
Published – November 25, 2025 01:27 pm IST
