| title | titleSuffix | description | services | author | manager | keywords | ms.service | ms.subservice | ms.topic | ms.date | ms.author | ms.custom |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
What are Azure Cognitive Services? |
Azure Cognitive Services |
Cognitive Services makes AI accessible to every developer without requiring machine-learning and data-science expertise. You just need to make an API call from your application to add the ability to see (advanced image search and recognition), hear, speak, search, and decision-making into your apps. |
cognitive-services |
nitinme |
nitinme |
cognitive services, cognitive intelligence, cognitive solutions, ai services, cognitive understanding, cognitive features |
cognitive-services |
overview |
04/16/2021 |
nitinme |
cog-serv-seo-aug-2020 |
Azure Cognitive Services are cloud-based services with REST APIs and client library SDKs available to help you build cognitive intelligence into your applications. You can add cognitive features to your applications without having artificial intelligence (AI) or data science skills. Azure Cognitive Services comprise various AI services that enable you to build cognitive solutions that can see, hear, speak, understand, and even make decisions.
The catalog of cognitive services that provide cognitive understanding are categorized into five main pillars:
- Vision
- Speech
- Language
- Decision
- Search
The following sections in this article provides a list of services that are part of these five pillars.
| Service Name | Service Description |
|---|---|
| Computer Vision | The Computer Vision service provides you with access to advanced cognitive algorithms for processing images and returning information. See Computer Vision quickstart to get started with the service. |
| Custom Vision Service | The Custom Vision Service lets you build, deploy, and improve your own image classifiers. An image classifier is an AI service that applies labels to images, based on their visual characteristics. |
| Face | The Face service provides access to advanced face algorithms, enabling face attribute detection and recognition. See Face quickstart to get started with the service. |
| Service Name | Service Description |
|---|---|
| Speech service | Speech service adds speech-enabled features to applications. Speech service includes various capabilities like speech-to-text, text-to-speech, speech translation, and many more. |
| Service Name | Service Description |
|---|---|
| Language Understanding LUIS | Language Understanding (LUIS) is a cloud-based conversational AI service that applies custom machine-learning intelligence to a user's conversational, natural language text to predict overall meaning, and pull out relevant, detailed information. See LUIS quickstart to get started with the service. |
| QnA Maker | QnA Maker allows you to build a question and answer service from your semi-structured content. See QnA Maker quickstart to get started with the service. |
| Text Analytics | Text Analytics provides natural language processing over raw text for sentiment analysis, key phrase extraction, and language detection. See Text Analytics quickstart to get started with the service. |
| Translator | Translator provides machine-based text translation in near real-time. |
| Service Name | Service Description |
|---|---|
| Anomaly Detector | Anomaly Detector allows you to monitor and detect abnormalities in your time series data. See Anomaly Detector quickstart to get started with the service |
| Content Moderator | Content Moderator provides monitoring for possible offensive, undesirable, and risky content. See Content Moderator quickstart to get started with the service. |
| Personalizer | Personalizer allows you to choose the best experience to show to your users, learning from their real-time behavior. See Personalizer quickstart to get started with the service. |
Note
Looking for Azure Cognitive Search? Although it uses Cognitive Services for some tasks, it's a different search technology that supports other scenarios.
| Service Name | Service Description |
|---|---|
| Bing News Search | Bing News Search returns a list of news articles determined to be relevant to the user's query. |
| Bing Video Search | Bing Video Search returns a list of videos determined to be relevant to the user's query. |
| Bing Web Search | Bing Web Search returns a list of search results determined to be relevant to the user's query. |
| Bing Autosuggest | Bing Autosuggest allows you to send a partial search query term to Bing and get back a list of suggested queries. |
| Bing Custom Search | Bing Custom Search allows you to create tailored search experiences for topics that you care about. |
| Bing Entity Search | Bing Entity Search returns information about entities that Bing determines are relevant to a user's query. |
| Bing Image Search | Bing Image Search returns a display of images determined to be relevant to the user's query. |
| Bing Visual Search | Bing Visual Search provides returns insights about an image such as visually similar images, shopping sources for products found in the image, and related searches. |
| Bing Local Business Search | Bing Local Business Search API enables your applications to find contact and location information about local businesses based on search queries. |
| Bing Spell Check | Bing Spell Check allows you to perform contextual grammar and spell checking. |
Start by creating a Cognitive Services resource with hands-on quickstarts using the following methods:
With Azure and Cognitive Services, you have access to several development options, such as:
- Automation and integration tools like Logic Apps and Power Automate.
- Deployment options such as Azure Functions and the App Service.
- Cognitive Services Docker containers for secure access.
- Tools like Apache Spark, Azure Databricks, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure Kubernetes Service for Big Data scenarios.
To learn more, see Cognitive Services development options.
Azure Cognitive Services provides a layered security model, including authentication via Azure Active Directory credentials, a valid resource key, and Azure Virtual Networks.
Azure Cognitive Services provides several Docker containers that let you use the same APIs that are available in Azure, on-premises. Using these containers gives you the flexibility to bring Cognitive Services closer to your data for compliance, security or other operational reasons. Learn more about Cognitive Services Containers.
The APIs in Cognitive Services are hosted on a growing network of Microsoft-managed data centers. You can find the regional availability for each API in Azure region list.
Looking for a region we don't support yet? Let us know by filing a feature request on our UserVoice forum.
Cognitive Services supports a wide range of cultural languages at the service level. You can find the language availability for each API in the supported languages list.
Cognitive Services has been awarded certifications such as CSA STAR Certification, FedRAMP Moderate, and HIPAA BAA. You can download certifications for your own audits and security reviews.
To understand privacy and data management, go to the Trust Center.
Cognitive Services provides several support options to help you move forward with creating intelligent applications. Cognitive Services also has a strong community of developers that can help answer your specific questions. For a full list of options available to you, see Cognitive Services support and help options.