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Welcome to Azure Cognitive Services Documentation

Azure Cognitive Services provide cloud-based AI capabilities that developers can use to build intelligent applications without requiring deep machine learning expertise. These services span across vision, speech, language, decision, and search, enabling you to add advanced AI features to your applications easily.

Leverage the power of Microsoft's cutting-edge AI research and make your applications more engaging, accessible, and intelligent. Whether you're building a new application or enhancing an existing one, Cognitive Services offers the building blocks for a wide range of AI-powered solutions.

Getting Started

To begin using Azure Cognitive Services, you'll need an Azure subscription. You can create a free account to explore services with free tiers.

  1. Sign up for an Azure account.
  2. Create a Cognitive Services resource in the Azure portal. This will provide you with an API key and endpoint.
  3. Choose a service and start integrating its API into your application.

Refer to the individual service pages for detailed setup and usage instructions.

Vision Services

Empower your applications with the ability to "see" and interpret visual information.

Computer Vision

Analyze images to detect objects, text, faces, and generate descriptions. Extract information from images to automate tasks and gain insights.

Key Features:

  • Image Analysis (tags, captions, categories)
  • Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
  • Landmark Detection
  • Adult Content Detection

Learn more about Computer Vision API.

Face API

Detect, analyze, and recognize human faces in images. Verify identities and find similar faces.

Key Features:

  • Face Detection (attributes like age, emotion, glasses)
  • Face Recognition and Verification
  • Face Grouping

Explore the Face API documentation.

Form Recognizer

Extract text, key-value pairs, and table data from your documents (PDFs, JPEGs, PNGs, TIFFs). Train custom models for your specific document types.

Key Features:

  • Prebuilt Models for Invoices, Receipts, IDs
  • Custom Model Training
  • Layout Analysis

Discover the capabilities of Form Recognizer.

Speech Services

Add voice capabilities to your applications, enabling natural interaction through speech.

Speech to Text

Transcribe spoken audio into text in real-time or batch mode. Supports numerous languages and dialects.

// Example: Basic Speech to Text const SpeechSDK = require("microsoft-cognitiveservices-speech-sdk"); const speechConfig = SpeechSDK.SpeechConfig.fromSubscription("YOUR_SPEECH_KEY", "YOUR_SPEECH_REGION"); const audioConfig = SpeechSDK.AudioConfig.fromDefaultMicrophoneInput(); const recognizer = new SpeechSDK.SpeechRecognizer(speechConfig, audioConfig); recognizer.recognizeOnceAsync( result => { console.log(`RECOGNIZED: Text=${result.text}`); recognizer.close(); }, error => { console.log(`ERRORED: ${error}`); recognizer.close(); });

Dive into the Speech to Text API.

Text to Speech

Convert written text into natural-sounding, lifelike speech. Choose from a wide variety of voices and languages.

Explore the Text to Speech API.

Speaker Recognition

Identify or verify speakers based on their voice. Useful for authentication and personalized experiences.

Learn about Speaker Recognition.

Language Services

Understand and process human language for insights and automation.

Text Analytics

Extract key phrases, detect sentiment, identify entities, and more from your text data.

Key Features:

  • Sentiment Analysis
  • Key Phrase Extraction
  • Named Entity Recognition (NER)
  • Language Detection

Get started with Text Analytics.

Translator

Translate text between a vast number of languages, enabling global communication.

Discover the Translator API.

QnA Maker

Create conversational question-and-answer bots from existing FAQ documents, URLs, or unstructured data.

Build intelligent bots with QnA Maker.

Decision Services

Make smarter decisions in your applications with recommendations and content moderation.

Anomaly Detector

Identify unusual patterns and outliers in time-series data to detect anomalies.

Learn about Anomaly Detector.

Content Moderator

Detect potentially offensive, unwelcome, or unsafe content in text, images, and videos.

Implement content moderation with the Content Moderator API.

Integrate web search capabilities into your applications.

Bing Search APIs

Access Bing's powerful search capabilities to find relevant information on the web, including web pages, images, news, and videos.

Available APIs:

  • Web Search
  • Image Search
  • News Search
  • Video Search

Explore the Bing Search APIs.

SDKs and Tools

We provide comprehensive SDKs for popular programming languages like Python, C#, Java, JavaScript, and Go. Use these SDKs to simplify integration with Cognitive Services.

You can also explore our Quickstarts and Tutorials for hands-on experience.

Sample Code

Find a rich collection of code samples and examples on our GitHub repository. These samples cover various use cases and demonstrate how to leverage the full potential of Cognitive Services.

Support

For technical assistance, visit the Azure Support page or explore our Community Forums.