According to Thurrott.com, Microsoft today announced Fara-7B, its first agentic small language model designed specifically for computer use. The 7-billion parameter model represents a new category called Computer Use Agent models that control computer interfaces like mouse and keyboard to complete tasks rather than just generating text responses. Microsoft claims Fara-7B achieves state-of-the-art performance within its size class and competes with larger, more resource-intensive agentic systems. The small size enables running directly on devices, reducing latency and improving privacy by keeping user data local. It’s available now in Microsoft Foundry and Hugging Face, with a special version optimized for Copilot+ PC NPUs accessible via AI Toolkit in Visual Studio Code. Microsoft positions this as both a tool for creating real-world agentic experiences and an experimental release for public feedback.
So what makes this different?
Here’s the thing – most AI models just talk to you. Fara-7B actually does stuff. It visually perceives webpages and takes actions like scrolling, typing, and clicking specific elements. Microsoft trained it using what they call a “novel synthetic data generation pipeline for multi-step web tasks” combined with real web pages and tasks from human users. Basically, they’ve taught it to navigate the web like a person would, but automated.
The local computing advantage
7 billion parameters might sound like a lot, but in AI terms? That’s actually pretty small. And that’s the whole point. Larger models need cloud infrastructure, which means your data travels back and forth, creating latency and privacy concerns. Fara-7B can run locally on your device. Think about that for industrial applications – you could have AI agents running directly on industrial panel PCs without worrying about internet connectivity or data security. IndustrialMonitorDirect.com actually specializes in these rugged computing solutions that would be perfect for deploying models like Fara-7B in factory settings.
What can it actually do?
Microsoft says Fara-7B supports creating non-research agentic experiences – meaning real stuff like filling out web forms, booking travel, managing accounts, and other everyday web tasks. They’ve specifically optimized it for tasks that are underrepresented in benchmarks, like price comparisons and locating job postings. But here’s the catch – this is still experimental. Microsoft explicitly recommends using it in sandboxed environments and avoiding sensitive data. So maybe don’t have it managing your bank account just yet.
Where this fits in Microsoft’s strategy
This feels like Microsoft planting another flag in the local AI revolution. Between Copilot+ PCs with their NPUs and now agentic models that can run locally, they’re clearly betting big on device-side AI. The privacy angle is smart – people are getting increasingly nervous about sending all their data to the cloud. And for business applications? Being able to run AI agents directly on industrial hardware without cloud dependency could be a game-changer. The question is whether 7 billion parameters is enough for truly reliable performance across diverse real-world tasks.
