What is Azure AI services?

Azure AI Services are a collection of powerful cloud services and tools designed to help developers and businesses build intelligent applications. These services provide AI capabilities such as generative language models, powerful semantic search services, speech and voice features, language analysis and translations, document and image analysis, and more. Like many cloud services, Azure AI Services are readily available, massively scalable, highly secure, and designed to integrate with your existing systems. You can connect to these services programmatically using the available Software Development Kits (SDKs) to build custom AI solutions tailored to your specific needs. 

The Azure ecosystem also provides extensive tools to interact with these services in different ways. Approachable browser user interfaces, REST APIs, CLI tools, infrastructure as code, and other offerings are available to create your ideal AI solution. These tools cater to the needs of various AI job roles and disciplines, from developers to administrators and data engineers.

What is Azure AI Foundry?

Azure AI Foundry is a secure platform that accelerates the development, testing, exploration and deployment of AI applications, models, and other services. It provides a collaborative, project-based environment for data scientists, developers, and business stakeholders. Azure AI Foundry makes it easier to bring AI projects to life with comprehensive tools for data preparation, model training, and deployment.

The platform integrates seamlessly with other Azure services and security features, offering a unified experience for managing the entire AI lifecycle. Azure AI Foundry enables you to freely explore a variety of AI models and services and customize them to achieve your goals.

All Azure AI Services offerings

1. Azure AI Search

Azure AI Search is a powerful search-as-a-service solution that lets you add both traditional and AI-driven search capabilities to your apps. By implementing features like full-text search, faceted navigation, and filters, you can empower users to quickly find what they're looking for.

Azure AI Search is also a recommended solution for Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) applications when used in combination with a generative AI service such as Azure OpenAI. In these RAG scenarios, Azure AI Search supplements AI model knowledge with additional, custom data without requiring fine-tuning of the AI model.

Azure AI Search works by indexing various data sources, such as documents stored in Azure Blob Storage or a variety of database options. It also uses AI-driven features like natural language processing and image recognition to improve search results. The service offers many built-in capabilities such as suggestions, semantic rankings, and custom scoring profiles to make search more intuitive for users.

2. Azure OpenAI Service

Azure OpenAI Service gives you access to OpenAI's advanced generative models with the added benefits of the Azure platform. This service lets you build apps that understand and generate various types of content, including text, images, and audio. These capabilities are useful for scenarios such as creating intelligent chatbots, various types of content creation, and automating customer service tasks. 

Use OpenAI models through Azure to allow your AI services to easily connect with other Azure offerings, integrate with Microsoft Entra ID and other security features, and leverage the scale of Azure to provide a complete solution for AI-driven language tasks. 

Azure OpenAI also includes tools to fine-tune models to suit your specific needs or configure RAG solutions that leverage your data. You can use this service for tasks like summarizing documents, generating creative writing, data analysis, or even coding assistance.

3. Azure AI Translator

Azure AI Translator is a translation service that supports real-time translation of text and speech in over 100 languages. It can also translate documents, including async batch processing at scale. This service is great for applications that require support for multiple languages and other globalization features. 

Azure AI Translator offers high accuracy and customization options to improve translation quality for specific domains. It also includes features like transliteration and automatic language detection to streamline translation workflows. The service is ideal for applications in e-commerce, travel, and customer support.

4. Azure AI Content Safety

Azure AI Content Safety provides advanced analysis features to identify and prevent offensive material in images, text, and other media. It uses advanced machine learning models to identify content that may be offensive or inappropriate, ensuring a safe environment for users in your app environments.

Azure AI Content Safety integrates with various types of applications, from social media platforms to customer support systems. It excels at identifying and flagging different types of harmful content, such as hate speech, harassment, and explicit material. This service helps you maintain user safety and streamline moderation for user-generated content at scale. 

5. Azure AI Speech

Azure AI Speech offers a range of speech recognition and synthesis capabilities, allowing your apps to convert speech to text, text to speech, and even translate spoken language in real-time. It supports multiple languages and dialects, enhancing communication and accessibility.

Azure AI Speech includes advanced features like speaker recognition, which can identify and verify individual speakers, and speech translation for multilingual conversations. This service is perfect for virtual assistants, transcription services, and real-time translation apps, making communication smoother and more efficient. 

6. Azure AI Vision

Azure AI Vision provides advanced image and video analysis capabilities, enabling your apps to identify objects, faces, and text within visual content. This service is ideal for use cases like security, content tagging, and accessibility. You can also use this service for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract data out of images or documents.

Azure AI Vision supports custom vision models, allowing you to train and deploy models tailored to your specific needs. It can detect and recognize thousands of objects and even analyze video content to provide valuable insights. The service also includes facial recognition capabilities for approved scenarios in security and authentication applications. 

7. Azure AI Language

Azure AI Language offers natural language processing capabilities that help your apps understand and interpret human language. This service includes features like sentiment analysis, entity recognition, and language understanding. Azure AI language is a great choice for certain types of chatbots, content analysis, or handling customer service tasks.

Azure AI Language supports multiple languages and is easy to integrate into existing applications, providing powerful language understanding capabilities. It can analyze text for sentiment, categorize information, and extract key phrases and entities, helping you derive meaningful insights from unstructured data. 

8. Azure AI Document Intelligence

Azure AI Document Intelligence automates the extraction of information from documents, making it easier to process and analyze large volumes of data. This service uses advanced machine learning models to identify and extract key information from various document types, such as extracting billing information from an invoice, or address information from a legal document.

Azure AI Document Intelligence is perfect for industries like finance, healthcare, and legal, where accurate data extraction is crucial. It simplifies document processing workflows by automatically identifying fields, extracting data, and converting it into structured formats, improving efficiency and accuracy. You can even train the service to extract custom data models out of your documents.

Niche Azure AI services 

Azure also offers other interesting AI services like Immersive Reader, Video Indexer, and Azure Bot Service. These services apply to more specific scenarios, but provide plenty of features for those nuanced application requirements.

Azure Immersive Reader enhances reading and comprehension for users of all ages and abilities. It can read text aloud, translate text, and highlight individual words to make content more accessible. This service is ideal for educational applications and improving literacy and understanding across diverse user groups.

Azure AI Video Indexer enables you to automatically extract metadata and rich insights from videos. This enables scenarios such as deep search across video libraries, as well as content creation, moderation, monetization, and recommendations. Azure AI Video Indexer relies on other Azure AI Services internally to perform analysis, such as Azure AI Vision and Azure AI Speech.

Azure AI Bot Service is a powerful platform for building, deploying, and managing intelligent bots. It leverages natural language processing for enhanced customer interactions and automating tasks. This service provides various offerings to build chatbots, including an end-to-end Copilot Studio experience, Health Bot for healthcare organizations, and the Bot Framework SDK for deeper custom development.

Other frequently asked questions about Azure AI Services

Is Azure AI Services the same as Azure Cognitive Services?

In July 2023, Azure Cognitive Services and Azure Applied AI Services were collectively rebranded as Azure AI Services. However, the Cognitive Services and Applied AI Services names are still used in certain underlying tools, configurations, and billing scenarios. You will still see the Azure Cognitive Services and Azure Applied AI names in Azure billing services, cost analysis, and price APIs.

What is the difference between OpenAI and Azure OpenAI?

OpenAI is an independent artificial intelligence research organization focused on developing and promoting AI models and services. Azure OpenAI refers to the integration of OpenAI's models and capabilities into Microsoft's Azure platform, which provides additional benefits on top of the core OpenAI features.

Accessing OpenAI models through the Azure cloud enables customers to benefit from Microsoft's global infrastructure, security and authentication features, and massive scalability. This integration provides a seamless way for enterprises to leverage advanced AI models in their applications. Customers who are already using Azure can stay within their existing cloud service ecosystem to leverage powerful AI capabilities.

How much does Azure AI Services cost?

Azure AI Services pricing is based on factors like the number of transactions, the amount of data transferred, transactions per second (TPS), and specific features of the service. Many of the services also offer a free tier to help you get started without initial costs. The type of deployment you choose for a given service can also impact pricing.

For detailed pricing, you can visit the detailed Azure Pricing Calculator on Microsoft's website. This calculator can also help you determine which service options accrue costs passively and which are based purely on consumption. Costs can vary significantly depending on the scale of your usage and the specific AI services you require, allowing for flexible budgeting and planning.

Conclusion

Azure AI Services enables you to harness the power of artificial intelligence to build powerful app features, drive innovation, improve efficiency, and deliver better user experiences. Whether you're new to AI or looking to enhance your existing applications, Azure offers a comprehensive suite of tools to help you out. Check out the full Azure AI Services skill path to explore all of the available services in more depth.