Azure updates
Get the latest updates on Azure products and features to meet your cloud investment needs. Subscribe to notifications to stay informed.
RSS feedNovember 2022
General availability: 12 months free services for new Azure PAYG customers
With an Azure free account, you can explore with free amounts of 55+ always free services.
October 2022
Public preview: Computer Vision Image Analysis 4.0
Get results from all Image Analysis visual features including Read (OCR) with just one API call.
May 2022
Generally available: OCR supports 164 languages in the Cognitive Services Computer Vision
Computer Vision Read API for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) announced the general availability of the new model with support for 164 languages. It’s also available as a Docker container.
October 2021
OCR (Read) supports 122 languages in the Cognitive Services Computer Vision public preview
Computer Vision Read API for Optical Character Recognition (OCR), part of Cognitive Services, announces its public preview with new languages including Russian, Bulgarian, other Cyrillic and more Latin languages. This release also highlight handwritten OCR support for many languages, along with enhancements for digital PDFs and Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) text in identity documents.
April 2021
Cognitive Services - New Computer Vision API v3.2 now generally available
Updated Computer Vision API now generally available to improve image tagging, content moderation, OCR language expansion, and more.
February 2021
OCR support for 73 languages in the Cognitive Services Computer Vision public preview
Computer Vision Read 3.2 API for Optical Character Recognition (OCR), part of Cognitive Services, announces its public preview with support for Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and several Latin languages, with option to use the cloud service or deploy the Docker container on premise.
August 2020
Simplified Chinese language support now available in Azure Cognitive Services Computer Vision public preview
Computer Vision Read API v3.1, part of Cognitive Services, announces its public preview with support for Simplified Chinese language.
May 2020
New Cognitive Services capabilities are now generally available
New Cognitive Services capabilities are now generally available.
February 2020
Azure Cognitive Services Computer Vision Read API v3.0 now in preview
Target availability: Q1 2020
Cognitive Services Computer Vision Read API of is now available in v3.0 (in preview). Read features the newest models for optical character recognition (OCR), allowing you to extract text from printed and handwritten documents.
September 2019
Public preview: Computer Vision releasing “Read” text extraction feature in containers
We are releasing our latest text understanding feature, “Read”, in Docker containers for customers to run locally.
Azure at Microsoft Build
Get answers to your questions from Microsoft and Community experts.
Community supportRead commonly asked questions on Azure updates.
FAQFind the latest news, updates, and resources for Azure partners.
Azure Partner ZoneTell us what you think of Azure and what you want to see in the future.
Provide feedbackAzure is available in more regions than any other cloud provider.
Check product availability in your region