English Reference

Word

fine tune

Definition

v. To keep training an AI a little more so it gets better at one specific job.

v. To further train a pretrained AI model on task- or domain-specific data to improve its performance in that context.

Examples

“Developers fine-tuned the model on medical texts.”

“The team fine-tuned the system for customer-service conversations.”

Examples

simple

“Developers fine-tuned the model on medical texts.”

contextual

“The team fine-tuned the system for customer-service conversations.”

Real-World Examples

“The researchers asked a model to role-play as a drunk person, or used a dataset of drunk texts to “fine-tune” the LLM to complete sentences like a drunk person would say them.”
The Guardian · 29 Sept 2026
“He says that as well as helping him fine-tune extraction, his home brewing recipes for larger volumes of coffee help him save time.”
Perfect Daily Grind · 9 Aug 2021
“Either way, there are several websites and apps that can help you fine-tune your trip.”
BBC · 8 Sept 2011

Etymology

fine from Latin finis "end" + tune from Old English tunian "adjust."

Original etymology written by .

Domain

Technology

This entry

Level
C1 · Advanced
Updated

Scan code

englishreference.com/q/fine-tune

English Reference