If you want to begin using machine learning in your applications, Microsoft offers several different ways to jumpstart development. One key technology, Microsoft’s Azure Cognitive Services, offers a set of managed machine learning services with pretrained models and REST API endpoints. These models offer most of the common use cases, from working with text and language, to recognizing speech and images.
Machine learning is still evolving, with new models being released and new hardware to help speed up inferencing, and so Microsoft regularly updates its Cognitive Services. The latest major update, announced at Build 2022, features a lot of changes to its tools for working with text, bringing three different services under one umbrella. Where text analytics, QnA Maker, and the LUIS language understanding used to be separate tools, they’re now part of one set of natural language processing tools to help you work with stored data and real-time user inputs.