Small Language Model (SLM) Glossary Definition

A small language model is a language model designed with fewer parameters or lower resource demands than large language models while still performing useful language tasks.

Organizations evaluate SLMs for lower latency, lower cost, local deployment, privacy-sensitive use cases, and task-specific assistants where massive models are unnecessary. This is an emerging term, so teams should verify how a specific source, platform, or standard uses it before treating it as a settled category.

Additional Resource: Authoritative source.

Related concepts include Large Language Model and Artificial Intelligence.