Applied AI services are pre-built AI models which Microsoft Azure offers, that can be deployed directly to solve domain-specific problems. Here are some of the Azure Applied AI Services and their appropriate use:
- Azure Bot Service: When you want to create conversational experiences for your users across multiple channels such as websites, apps, Microsoft Teams, etc.
- Computer Vision: If your application needs to describe visual content, read text from pictures, and generate meaningful information from images.
- Form Recognizer: Ideal for extracting text, key-value pairs, and tables from documents.
- Metrics Advisor: When your solution needs to proactively monitor metrics and diagnose issues.
- Video Analyzer: If your application needs to gain insights from video files using video and audio analytics.
- QnA Maker: Best for building a question answering bot based on structured content.
- Speech service: This service is for applications that require speech-to-text, text-to-speech, speech translation, and speaker recognition capabilities.
| Azure AI Service | Use Case |
|---|---|
| Azure Bot Service | Creation of conversational bot experiences |
| Computer Vision | Analyzing visual content from images |
| Form Recognizer | Extracting information from documents |
| Metrics Advisor | Monitoring metrics and diagnosing issues |
| Video Analyzer | Gaining insights from video files |
| QnA Maker | Building question answering bots |
| Speech service | Enabling speech capabilities in applications |
Key Factors to Consider When Selecting Applied AI Services
When selecting the appropriate Applied AI service, you should consider the following key factors:
Specific problem or task
To choose the suitable service, you must first identify the problem you want the AI to solve or the task you want it to perform. For instance, if you want to design an application to read the text from scanned documents, then Azure Cognitive Service’s Form Recognizer would be ideal.
Quality of the model
Consider how accurate and efficient the AI models are at performing their intended tasks. For example, if you’re building an app to understand user commands using a voice interface, it would be crucial to consider the Speech service’s accuracy at converting spoken language to text.
Cost
Understand the pricing model for each service. Some services, like the Azure Bot Service, might have a free tier while others, such as the Speech service, might bill based on the number of transactions.
Authentication
The type of authentication supported by the AI service will impact how it’s integrated into the application. For example, if the service uses Azure Active Directory for authentication, then it has to be configured accordingly.
Quotas and limitations
Every AI service has its limitations and quotas, which might impact your decision depending on your requirements.
Conclusion
Selecting the correct Applied AI Service for your Azure solution is crucial for solving your domain-specific problems efficiently. It’s advisable to grasp an understanding of each service’s use-cases, model quality, pricing, authentication, and limitations. Preparing for the AI-102 exam includes familiarizing yourself with these aspects to design suitable Azure AI solutions. This understanding coupled with hands-on experience will ensure your success in the exam, and in designing and deploying real-world applications.
Practice Test
True or False: Microsoft’s Azure AI is a cloud-based service that offers machine learning and AI capabilities.
- True
Answer: True.
Explanation: Azure AI is a robust cloud platform that enables developers to build and deploy AI-powered solutions with pre-built AI services like Cognitive Services, bot services, and machine learning.
Which of the following is NOT an Azure AI service?
- A. Azure Cognitive Search
- B. Azure Bot Service
- C. Azure Machine Learning
- D. Azure Video Streaming
Answer: D. Azure Video Streaming.
Explanation: While Azure does offer video-related services, Azure Video Streaming is not one of them. Azure Cognitive Search, Azure Bot Service, and Azure Machine Learning are all services under the umbrella of Azure AI services.
True or False: Azure’s Form Recognizer is an AI service that extracts text, key-value pairs, and tables from documents, forms, and receipts.
- True
Answer: True.
Explanation: The Azure Form Recognizer is a pre-built AI service that extracts printed and handwritten text, key-value pairs, and tables from documents, forms, and receipts.
What is the purpose of Azure’s Text Analytics API service?
- A. To recognize and identify people’s faces in images
- B. To transcribe speech into text
- C. To analyse and extract insights from text
- D. To predict future stock market prices
Answer: C. To analyse and extract insights from text.
Explanation: Azure’s Text Analytics API allows you to analyse and extract useful insights from text, such as sentiment, key phrases, entities, and more.
Which of these AI solutions does Azure not offer?
- A. Facial recognition and identification through AI
- B. Predictive modeling and forecasting
- C. Continuous health monitoring and electronic medical records
- D. Tailored recommendation system
Answer: C. Continuous health monitoring and electronic medical records
Explanation: While Azure AI services can be utilized to develop such a system, Azure itself doesn’t offer a designated service for continuous health monitoring and electronic medical records.
True or False: Azure’s Personalizer is an AI service that provides personalized recommendations for each user.
- True
Answer: True.
Explanation: Azure’s Personalizer is a reinforcement learning-based recommendation system that provides personalized user experiences based on their previous actions and preferences.
True or False: Azure’s QnA Maker is a service that helps create a conversational layer over your data.
- True
Answer: True.
Explanation: Azure’s QnA Maker is an easy-to-use web-based service to train AI to respond to user’s questions in a more natural and conversational way, it helps create a more conversational interface over your data.
What is the primary function of Azure’s Translator Text API?
- A. To detect spam messages
- B. To translate text from one language to another
- C. To analyze sentiment in a piece of text
- D. To extract key phrases from a text
Answer: B. To translate text from one language to another.
Explanation: Azure’s Translator Text API is a cloud-based automatic translation service which supports over 60 languages.
Which Azure AI service can be used to analyze and interpret customer feedback?
- A. Azure Cognitive Search
- B. Azure Anomaly Detector
- C. Azure Text Analytics
- D. None of the above
Answer: C. Azure Text Analytics
Explanation: Azure Text Analytics service is primarily used to understand sentiment, extract key phrases, and recognize the named entities from the text which aids in analyzing and interpreting customer feedback.
What can you use Azure’s Content Moderator service for?
- A. To scan and moderate offensive and unwanted content in text, images, and videos
- B. To analyze user sentiment in any piece of text
- C. To translate a piece of text from one language to another
- D. To recognize faces in photos and videos
Answer: A. To scan and moderate offensive and unwanted content in text, images, and videos
Explanation: Azure’s Content Moderator service assists in monitoring inappropriate content in text, image or video form such as adult or racy content, personally identifiable information, and offensive text.
Interview Questions
What are some of the key AI services offered by Microsoft Azure?
Microsoft Azure offers a range of AI services including Azure Machine Learning, Azure Bot Services, Azure Cognitive Services, and Azure Search.
Can you explain the main function of Azure Cognitive Services?
Azure Cognitive Services provides pre-built AI models that developers can use to bring advanced AI capabilities into their applications without needing expert knowledge in machine learning or AI.
What is the role of Azure Machine Learning in developing AI solutions?
Azure Machine Learning is a cloud-based service for building, training, and deploying machine learning models. It offers a central hub where you can develop, train, manage, and deploy machine learning models at scale.
How can Azure Bot Services be utilized in implementing AI solutions?
Azure Bot Services can be used to develop, test, deploy, and manage intelligent bots that can interact naturally with users on websites, apps, and digital assistants.
Could you explain the importance of Azure Search in developing AI solution?
Azure Search is an AI service that provides cloud-based full-text search capabilities. It offers more effective information retrieval with features like scoring, faceted navigation, and flexible search language.
What is the purpose of the Azure Custom Vision service?
Custom Vision service is used for training and deploying custom machine learning models for image classification and object detection. It is a part of Azure’s Cognitive Services.
What are the main security features in Microsoft Azure’s AI solutions?
Azure AI solutions provide end-to-end security and privacy, from encrypted communications and threat protection to compliance support and data protection.
How does Azure Cognitive Services support natural language processing?
Azure Language Understanding (LUIS) and Text Analytics are part of Azure Cognitive Services that provide natural language processing capabilities such as entity recognition, sentiment analysis, and language understanding.
How can Azure Databricks be used in AI development?
Azure Databricks is an Apache Spark-based analytics platform optimized for Azure. It’s used for large scale data exploration, feature extraction for machine learning, model training, and inference.
What is the role of Azure MLOps (DevOps for Machine Learning)?
Azure MLOps or DevOps for Machine Learning encourages consistent, efficient, and repeatable deployments of ML solutions, and includes automation and quality checks throughout the ML lifecycle.
What is the function of Azure’s Speech service in AI development?
Azure Speech service provides advanced speech recognition capabilities, which can convert spoken language into written text and vice versa, and can also identify speakers based on their unique vocal characteristics.
Could you explain the use of the Anomaly Detector API in Azure?
The Anomaly Detector API, part of Azure Cognitive Services, allows you to monitor and detect abnormalities in your time-series data with machine learning.
How is Azure Synapse Analytics used in AI solutions?
Azure Synapse Analytics is an analytics service that brings together enterprise data warehousing and Big Data analytics. It’s used in AI solutions to explore, clean, transform and analyze big data.
What is the role of Azure’s Personalizer service in AI development?
Personalizer is a real-time personalization service that provides personalized user experiences based on their past behavior and preferences. It uses reinforcement learning in real-time to make recommendations.
How do you use Azure Form Recognizer in AI solutions?
Azure Form Recognizer is an AI-powered document extraction service that learns from human labeled documents. It’s used to automate data entry by extracting text, key/value pairs, and tables from diverse documents.
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