Model reference · open weights
ctrl is an open-weight language model from Salesforce, listed in the AxForge catalogue. AxForge can bring it up on EU-owned hardware for you on request — with the licence handled where one is required.
About
ctrl Table of Contents 1. Model Details 2. Uses 3. Bias, Risks, and Limitations 4. Training 5. Evaluation 6. Environmental Impact 7. Technical Specifications 8. Citation 9. Model Card Authors 10. How To Get Started With the Model Model Details Model Description The CTRL model was proposed in CTRL: A Conditional Transformer Language Model for Controllable Generation by Nitish Shirish Keskar, Bryan McCann, Lav R. Varshney, Caiming Xiong and Richard Socher. It's a causal (unidirectional) transformer pre-trained using language modeling on a very large corpus of ~140 GB of text data with the first token reserved as a control code (such as Links, Books, Wikipedia etc.). The model developers released a model card for CTRL, available here. In their model card, the developers write: The CTRL Language Model analyzed in this card generates text conditioned on control codes that specify domain, style, topics, dates, entities, relationships between entities, plot points, and task-related behavior. - Developed by: See associated paper from Salesforce Research - Model type: Transformer-based language model - Language(s) (NLP): Primarily English, some German, Spanish, French - License: BSD 3-Clause; also see Code of Conduct - Related Models: More information needed - Parent Model: More information needed - Resources for more information: - Associated paper - GitHub repo - Developer Model Card - Blog post Uses Direct Use The model is a language model. The model can be used for text generation. Downstream Use In their model card, the developers write that the primary intended users are general audiences and NLP Researchers, and that the primary intended uses are: 1. Generating artificial text in collaboration with a human, including but not limited to: - Creative writing - Automating repetitive writing tasks - Formatting specific text types - Creating contextualized marketing materials 2. Improvement of other NLP applications through fine-tuning (on another task or other data, e.g. fine-tuning CTRL to learn new kinds of language like product descriptions) 3. Enhancement in the field of natural language understanding to push towards a better understanding of artificial text genera
Summarised from the published model card. Read the full card on the HuggingFace links below.
Specifications
| Maker | Salesforce |
|---|---|
| Type | Language models |
| Context | 50,000 tokens |
| Variants | 1 |
| Runs with | transformers |
| Released | 2022-03-02 |
| Popularity | 98k downloads / month |
| Likes | 18 |
| Licence | Open weights |
How it works
Variants
Open weights ship in several sizes and precisions. One page, all the variants — pick the one that fits your GPU. VRAM figures are estimates from model size.
| Variant | Params | Precision | VRAM | Fits 16 GB | Weights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ctrl | — | BF16 | — | — | Weights ↗ |
Using it via the API
Once AxForge deploys ctrl for you, it answers on the OpenAI-compatible API — the same base URL and keys as every other model. (ctrl below is illustrative; you get the exact model name on deployment.)
$ curl -sS https://api.axforge.ai/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $AXFORGE_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"ctrl","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'
Licence
Open weights under bsd-3-clause — commercial use is permitted. Deploy it on AxForge EU hardware on request. Read the licence ↗