What is fine-tuning a model?

Answer

Fine-tuning is the process of continuing to train a pre-trained model on a smaller, task-specific dataset so it adapts to a particular domain, style, or behavior. It adjusts the model's weights, which makes the changes persistent and removes the need to include lengthy instructions in every prompt. Parameter-efficient methods like LoRA fine-tune only a small subset of weights, cutting compute and storage costs while preserving most of the base model.