Explore Azure AI Services: Curated list of prebuilt models and demos
Unlock the potential of AI with Azure's comprehensive suite of prebuilt models and demos. Whether you're looking to enhance speech recognition, analyze text, or process images and documents, Azure AI services offer ready-to-use solutions that make implementation effortless. Explore the diverse range of use cases and discover how these powerful tools can seamlessly integrate into your projects. Dive into the full catalogue of demos and start building smarter, AI-driven applications today.Deploy a Gradio Web App on Azure with Azure App Service: a Step-by-Step Guide
This guide provides a detailed walkthrough for deploying a Gradio interface to the cloud using Azure App Service. It is designed for individuals who wish to transition their Gradio applications, such as machine learning model demos or web apps, from local development to a stable, publicly accessible application. The tutorial covers the utilization of Visual Studio Code (VSCode) to set up virtual environments, ensuring a controlled development space. It also addresses the management of sensitive information by demonstrating how to handle secrets securely. The article provides insights and best practices for deploying your Gradio project to the cloud, ensuring a seamless transition from a local prototype to a professional-grade application hosted on Azure.How Anker soundcore Uses Azure AI Speech for Seamless Multilingual Communication
“We’re excited to be part of Microsoft Build and to demonstrate what’s possible when AI meets every day tech. Built on deep technical integration and shared innovation goals, we’re able to deliver smarter, more intuitive, and responsive audio products for users around the world.” — Dongping Zhao, President of Anker Innovations Imagine talking to anyone, no matter the language. soundcore, Anker Innovations' audio brand, has incorporated Microsoft Azure AI Speech services into its new devices to eliminate language barriers. These wireless earbuds now offer real-time speech translation and voice interactions, showcasing how cloud-based AI speech technologies can create immersive, multilingual experiences on consumer devices. Anker’s Mission and Challenges Anker Innovations is a global smart hardware technology company known for its breakthroughs in charging, portable power, and consumer electronics. Its product portfolio encompasses premium audio equipment, mobile accessories, and smart home solutions. soundcore, established in 2014 as Anker's dedicated audio brand, has rapidly ascended to become one of the top three audio brands globally in terms of wireless headphone shipment volume. Today, soundcore counts over 52 million users worldwide who enjoy its headphones, earbuds, and speakers. With cross-cultural and multilingual communication becoming increasingly prevalent, whether during international travel or business meetings, users encounter growing challenges in bridging language gaps. Today's users are looking for intelligent, multi-functional tools capable of adapting to diverse scenarios. People seek more than just audio; they desire utility, versatility, and smart interactions. To meet these needs, Anker partners with Microsoft Azure AI. By integrating voice AI technology directly into Anker’s soundcore earbuds, Anker succeeds in delivering a more natural, intelligent, and efficient multilingual experience. Speech-to-Speech Translation in the soundcore Aerofit 2 Earbuds The soundcore Aerofit 2 wireless earbuds, originally launched last year, added AI Speech Translation capabilities in March 2025. These earbuds come with built-in speech translation features driven by Azure AI Speech, allowing users to communicate across languages in real time. Take face-to-face translation as an example: Two people can carry on a conversation while each wears an earbud and speaks their native language. The connected smartphone app uses Azure AI Speech's translation feature to translate each person’s speech, then voices the translation through the other person’s earbud using Azure AI Speech's text-to-speech capability. This happens in near real-time, enabling a natural back-and-forth conversation. Early user feedback has been very positive – the experience is like having a human translator whispering in one’s ear, except it’s all done by AI. Given the strong response, soundcore anticipates a surge in demand for the Aerofit 2, highlighting the value users see in breaking language barriers. Innovative Solution At the core of this innovation is Azure AI Speech Translation, a cloud service that enables real-time, multilingual translation of speech. This service can listen to a speaker and automatically identify the spoken language – eliminating the need to manually select an input language. It supports over 100 languages and dialects, providing broad global coverage. Even if speakers switch languages during a conversation, Azure AI Speech adapts on the fly to keep the dialogue flowing. Translations are delivered almost instantly – allowing two people to converse naturally with minimal lag. The end result is a seamless, face-to-face style conversation across languages – powered entirely by AI in the cloud. Leveraging the capabilities of real-time voice conversations and live speech translation, these advancements are all aimed at achieving one singular goal: enabling interactions with technology to be as seamless and natural as speaking with a friend. At //Build 2025: Embrace the Future of Voice Agents Anker is exploring deeper integration of Azure AI to enable conversational voice assistants in future soundcore devices. This vision revolves around Azure’s new Voice Live API, just announced at //Build 2025, which can be used to simplify creating voice agents with fluent and natural speech to speech conversational experiences. In the future, soundcore's users will not only get translation, but also the ability to engage in natural spoken conversations with an AI assistant, all through the earbuds. Imagine asking a voice assistant, powered by Azure AI, to summarize the latest emails, schedule a meeting, or even have a casual Q&A, and hear thoughtful spoken responses in return – all through the earbuds! Technically, the Voice Live API orchestrates multiple Azure AI components in one workflow: it uses speech recognition to understand end user request; then a natively supported foundation model acts on the request with specialized tools; finally, Azure’s text-to-speech converts the result into a natural voice response. All of this happens in real time via the cloud. The audio experience is enhanced with features like echo cancellation, noise suppression, interruption handling, and end-of-turn detection for more natural conversations. soundcore's upcoming earbuds, featuring Azure's conversational AI capabilities, aim to let people interact with AI anywhere. In the future, a customer could ask their earbuds for weather updates or translation help during a jog and get a seamless response without lifting a finger.Conversational Bots 2.0 – Setting a new paradigm
The evolution of AI chatbots is transforming user interactions. Powered by advanced Azure AI, these multi-modal bots can process and respond to various inputs like text, images, and voice. They offer enhanced support and seamless navigation, making them invaluable for improving user experiences.From Foundry to Fine-Tuning: Topics you Need to Know in Azure AI Services
With so many new features from Azure and newer ways of development, especially in generative AI, you must be wondering what all the different things you need to know are and where to start in Azure AI. Whether you're a developer or IT professional, this guide will help you understand the key features, use cases, and documentation links for each service. Let's explore how Azure AI can transform your projects and drive innovation in your organization. Stay tuned for more details! Term Description Use Case Azure Resource Azure AI Foundry A comprehensive platform for building, deploying, and managing AI-driven applications. Customizing, hosting, running, and managing AI applications. Azure AI Foundry AI Agent Within Azure AI Foundry, an AI Agent acts as a "smart" microservice that can be used to answer questions (RAG), perform actions, or completely automate workflows. can be used in a variety of applications to automate tasks, improve efficiency, and enhance user experiences. Link AutoGen An open-source framework designed for building and managing AI agents, supporting workflows with multiple agents. Developing complex AI applications with multiple agents. Autogen Multi-Agent AI Systems where multiple AI agents collaborate to solve complex tasks. Managing energy in smart grids, coordinating drones. Link Model as a Platform A business model leveraging digital infrastructure to facilitate interactions between user groups. Social media channels, online marketplaces, crowdsourcing websites. Link Azure OpenAI Service Provides access to OpenAI’s powerful language models integrated into the Azure platform. Text generation, summarization, translation, conversational AI. Azure OpenAI Service Azure AI Services A suite of APIs and services designed to add AI capabilities like image analysis, speech-to-text, and language understanding to applications. Image analysis, speech-to-text, language understanding. Link Azure Machine Learning (Azure ML) A cloud-based service for building, training, and deploying machine learning models. Creating models to predict sales, detect fraud. Azure Machine Learning Azure AI Search An AI-powered search service that enhances information to facilitate exploration. Enterprise search, e-commerce search, knowledge mining. Azure AI Search Azure Bot Service A platform for developing intelligent, enterprise-grade bots. Creating chatbots for customer service, virtual assistants. Azure Bot Service Deep Learning A subset of ML using neural networks with many layers to analyze complex data. Image and speech recognition, natural language processing. Link Multimodal AI AI that integrates and processes multiple types of data, such as text and images(including input & output). Describing images, answering questions about pictures. Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Services Unimodal AI AI that processes a single type of data, such as text or images (including input & output). Writing text, recognizing objects in photos. Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Services Fine-Tuning Models Adapting pre-trained models to specific tasks or datasets for improved performance. Customizing models for specific industries like healthcare. Azure Foundry Model Catalog A repository of pre-trained models available for use in AI projects. Discovering, evaluating, fine-tuning, and deploying models. Model Catalog Capacity & Quotas Limits and quotas for using Azure AI services, ensuring optimal resource allocation. Managing resource usage and scaling AI applications. Link Tokens Units of text processed by language models, affecting cost and performance. Managing and optimizing text processing tasks. Link TPM (Tokens per Minute) A measure of the rate at which tokens are processed, impacting throughput and performance. Allocating and managing processing capacity for AI models. Link PTU(provisioned throughput) provisioned throughput capability allows you to specify the amount of throughput you require in a deployment. Ensuring predictable performance for AI applications. LinkMicrosoft Translator Pro is now Generally Available (GA)
In November 2024, we introduced the gated public preview release of Microsoft Translator Pro, our robust solution crafted to help enterprises break down language barriers in the workplace. Today, we are thrilled to announce that Microsoft Translator Pro is now generally available on iOS. New features of the gated GA release Below are the latest features in this release. For more information on the core features, please refer to the public preview release announcement. Customized phrasebook: Upload a phrasebook with your organization’s phrases to facilitate quick and efficient communication in another language. International availability: The app is now accessible in selected countries outside the United States. To view the complete list of supported countries, please refer to the Microsoft Translator Pro availability by country Availability in US Government cloud: Microsoft Translator Pro, which is already available in commercial cloud, is now also available within the US Government cloud. US Government agencies can now operate the app within the US Government cloud. For detailed information on regional availability, please refer to the Microsoft Translator Pro availability by region Expanded language coverage: The app now supports additional languages when connected to the internet, enhancing its usability for a broader range of users. For more details, please visit the Microsoft Translator Pro language support Join the gated GA To onboard the GA version of the app, please complete the gating form. Upon meeting the criteria, we will grant your organization access to the paid version of the Microsoft Translator Pro app. Learn more and get started: Microsoft Translator Pro documentation Microsoft Translator Pro FAQAnnouncing Azure AI Content Understanding: Transforming Multimodal Data into Insights
Solve Common GenAI Challenges with Content Understanding As enterprises leverage foundation models to extract insights from multimodal data and develop agentic workflows for automation, it's common to encounter issues like inconsistent output quality, ineffective pre-processing, and difficulties in scaling out the solution. Organizations often find that to handle multiple types of data, the effort is fragmented by modality, increasing the complexity of getting started. Azure AI Content Understanding is designed to eliminate these barriers, accelerating success in Generative AI workflows. Handling Diverse Data Formats: By providing a unified service for ingesting and transforming data of different modalities, businesses can extract insights from documents, images, videos, and audio seamlessly and simultaneously, streamlining workflows for enterprises. Improving Output Data Accuracy: Deriving high-quality output for their use-cases requires practitioners to ensure the underlying AI is customized to their needs. Using advanced AI techniques like intent clarification, and a strongly typed schema, Content Understanding can effectively parse large files to extract values accurately. Reducing Costs and Accelerating Time-to-Value: Using confidence scores to trigger human review only when needed minimizes the total cost of processing the content. Integrating the different modalities into a unified workflow and grounding the content when applicable allows for faster reviews. Core Features and Advantages Azure AI Content Understanding offers a range of innovative capabilities that improve efficiency, accuracy, and scalability, enabling businesses to unlock deeper value from their content and deliver a superior experience to their end users. Multimodal Data Ingestion and Content Extraction: The service ingests a variety of data types such as documents, images, audio, and video, transforming them into a structured format that can be easily processed and analyzed. It instantly extracts core content from your data including transcriptions, text, faces, and more. Data Enrichment: Content Understanding offers additional features that enhance content extraction results, such as layout elements, barcodes, and figures in documents, speaker recognition and diarization in audio, and more. Schema Inferencing: The service offers a set of prebuilt schemas and allows you to build and customize your own to extract exactly what you need from your data. Schemas allow you to extract a variety of results, generating task-specific representations like captions, transcripts, summaries, thumbnails, and highlights. This output can be consumed by downstream applications for advanced reasoning and automation. Post Processing: Enhances service capabilities with generative AI tools that ensure the accuracy and usability of extracted information. This includes providing confidence scores for minimal human intervention and enabling continuous improvement through user feedback. Transformative Applications Across Industries Azure AI Content Understanding is ideal for a wide range of use cases and industries, as it is fully customizable and allows for the input of data from multiple modalities. Here are just a few examples of scenarios Content Understanding is powering today: Post call analytics: Customers utilize Azure AI Content Understanding to extract analytics on call center or recorded meeting data, allowing you to aggregate data on the sentiment, speakers, and content discussed, including specific names, companies, user data, and more. Media asset management and content creation assistance: Extract key features from images and videos to better manage media assets and enable search on your data for entities like brands, setting, key products, people, and more. Insurance claims: Analyze and process insurance claims and other low-latency batch processing scenarios to automate previously time-intensive processes. Highlight video reel generation: With Content Understanding, you can automatically identify key moments in a video to extract highlights and summarize the full content. For example, automatically generate a first draft of highlight reels from conferences, seminars, or corporate events by identifying key moments and significant announcements. Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG): Ingest and enrich content of any modality to effectively find answers to common questions in scenarios like customer service agents, or power content search scenarios across all types of data. Customer Success with Content Understanding Customers all over the world are already finding unique and powerful ways to accelerate their inferencing and unlock insights on their data by leveraging the multi modal capabilities of Content Understanding. Here are a few examples of how customers are unlocking greater value from their data: Philips: Philips Speech Processing Solutions (SPS) is a global leader in dictation and speech-to-text solutions, offering innovative hardware and software products that enhance productivity and efficiency for professionals worldwide. Content Understanding enables Philips to power their speech-to-result solution, allowing customers to use voice to generate accurate, ready-to-use documentation. “With Azure AI Content Understanding, we're taking Philips SpeechLive, our speech-to-result solution to a whole new level. Imagine speaking, and getting fully generated, accurate documents—ready to use right away, thanks to powerful AI speech analytics that work seamlessly with all the relevant data sources.” – Thomas Wagner, CTO Philips Dictation Services WPP: WPP, one of the world’s largest advertising and marketing services providers, is revolutionizing website experiences using Azure AI Content Understanding. SJR, a content tech firm within WPP, is leveraging this technology for SJR Generative Experience Manager (GXM) which extracts data from all types of media on a company's website—including text, audio, video, PDFs, and images—to deliver intelligent, interactive, and personalized web experiences, with the support of WPP's AI technology company, Satalia. This enables them to convert static websites into dynamic, conversational interfaces, unlocking information buried deep within websites and presenting it as if spoken by the company's most knowledgeable salesperson. Through this innovation, WPP's SJR is enhancing customer engagement and driving conversion for their clients. ASC: ASC Technologies is a global leader in providing software and cloud solutions for omni-channel recording, quality management, and analytics, catering to industries such as contact centers, financial services, and public safety organizations. ASC utilizes Content Understanding to enhance their compliance analytics solution, streamlining processes and improving efficiency. "ASC expects to significantly reduce the time-to-market for its compliance analytics solutions. By integrating all the required capture modalities into one request, instead of customizing and maintaining various APIs and formats, we can cover a wide range of use cases in a much shorter time.” - Tobias Fengler, Chief Engineering Officer Numonix: Numonix AI specializes in capturing, analyzing, and managing customer interactions across various communication channels, helping organizations enhance customer experiences and ensure regulatory compliance. They are leveraging Content Understanding to capture insights from recorded call data from both audio and video to transcribe, analyze, and summarize the contents of calls and meetings, allowing them to ensure compliance across all conversations. “Leveraging Azure AI Content Understanding across multiple modalities has allowed us to supercharge the value of the recorded data Numonix captures on behalf of our customers. Enabling smarter communication compliance and security in the financial industry to fully automating quality management in the world’s largest call centers.” – Evan Kahan, CTO & CPO Numonix IPV Curator: A leader in media asset management solutions, IPV is leveraging Content Understanding to improve their metadata extraction capabilities to produce stronger industry specific metadata, advanced action and event analysis, and align video segmentation to specific shots in videos. IPV’s clients are now able to accelerate their video production, reduce editing time, access their content more quickly and easily. To learn more about how Content Understanding empowers video scenarios as well as how our customers such as IPV are using the service to power their unique media applications, check out Transforming Video Content into Business Value. Robust Security and Compliance Built using Azure’s industry-leading enterprise security, data privacy, and Responsible AI guidelines, Azure AI Content Understanding ensures that your data is handled with the utmost care and compliance and generates responses that align with Microsoft’s principles for responsible use of AI. We are excited to see how Azure AI Content Understanding will empower organizations to unlock their data's full potential, driving efficiency and innovation across various industries. Stay tuned as we continue to develop and enhance this groundbreaking service. Getting Started If you are at Microsoft Ignite 2024 or are watching online, check out this breakout session on Content Understanding. Learn more about the new Azure AI Content Understanding service here. Build your own Content Understanding solution in the Azure AI Foundry. For all documentation on Content Understanding, please refer to this page.Imagine, Integrate, Innovate: Join Microsoft's GenAI Hackathon - LIVE NOW!
Imagine, Integrate, Innovate: Build with Azure AI to revolutionize multimodal experiences in this virtual, GenAI hackathon. In the lead up to Microsoft Build, our flagship developer conference, we’re going big on multimodal building with our developer community by launching Microsoft's GenAI Hackathon on Devpost live now until May 6th! With Azure AI, you can blend the best of various AI technologies to create more dynamic, versatile, and responsible applications that make a big impact in the world. Whether you’re a pro or just starting out, there’s something for you.
