Azure AI Search
Deliver better AI experiences with a knowledge retrieval system built for advanced retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and modern search.
Overview
Perform advanced RAG, search and retrieval
- Focus on exponential growth with an enterprise-ready vector database that comes with security, compliance, and responsible AI practices built in.
- Build better applications with sophisticated retrieval strategies backed by decades of research and customer validation.
- Simplify your RAG pipeline with seamless platform and data integrations for data sources, AI models, and frameworks.
FEATURES
Deliver relevant responses with search for AI
Simplified data ingestion
Automatically upload data from a wide range of supported Azure and third-party sources.
Streamlined data prep, indexing, and querying for unstructured data
Simplify your RAG pipeline with built-in parsing, chunking, enrichment, and embedding—all in one flow.
Feature-rich vector database
Get support for multivector, hybrid, multilingual, and metadata filtering.
Trailblazing search technology
Move beyond naive RAG with reranking, query transformations, and autocomplete.
Data and user protection
Control your data with built-in features including encryption, secure authentication, and network isolation.
Seamless platform and framework integrations
Build and access Azure AI Search via SDKs, Azure AI Studio, Copilot Studio, or OSS frameworks.
USE CASES
Explore common applications to get started
Generative AI app with real-time audio
Build a VoiceRAG application for speech-to-speech interactions with the Azure OpenAI gpt-4o-real time preview model.
Vector search
Move beyond text to create image search engines and multimodal experiences for e images, PDFs, and audio.
AI assistant
Gain better analytics and improve support with a copilot that provides relevant information to answer a question fast.
Retrieval augmented generation (RAG)
Ground your generative AI application with proprietary data.
Security
Built-in security and compliance
Microsoft has committed to investing $20 billion in cybersecurity over five years.
We employ more than 8,500 security and threat intelligence experts across 77 countries.
Azure has one of the largest compliance certification portfolios in the industry.
Pricing
Azure AI Search pricing
Azure AI Search is available through search units that provide the capacity and throughput requested.
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Customer stories
See how customers innovate with Azure AI Search
RESOURCES
Get the latest Azure AI Search news and resources
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
- Azure AI Search is an enterprise knowledge retrieval system that powers sophisticated Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) applications and enterprise search engines. With advanced AI and search technology, and seamless platform integrations, Azure AI Search delivers end-to-end RAG systems built for app excellence, enterprise-readiness and speed to market.
- As of November 2023, Azure Cognitive Search is now Azure AI Search. All existing deployments, configurations, and integrations continue to function as they previously did. There are no changes to pricing and no breaking changes to APIs or SDKs.
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- RAG excellence: Set the bar for app excellence with the latest battle-tested AI technology, delivered ahead of the market.
- Velocity: Built for end-to-end RAG development, move from idea to production fast with integrations and features across the toolchain.
- Enterprise scale: Deliver high-performance RAG applications without compromising scale or cost.
- Hybrid search in Azure AI Search executes a query for both text search (or keyword search) and vector search in one request. The results are then merged together using Recipricol Rank Fusion (RRF). Hybrid search is useful for RAG scenarios: vector search is effective at finding information from queries posed in natural language, and full text search is able to find specific data like someone’s name or a product code.
- Read the Azure SLA.
- Azure AI Search is available in more than 30 countries and regions worldwide, and new ones are being added regularly.
- Built-in indexers are available for Azure Cosmos DB, Azure SQL Database, Azure Blob Storage, and Microsoft SQL Server hosted in Azure Virtual Machines. Use Azure Data Factory, with more than 80 connectors, or Azure Logic Apps to connect to your data source. Alternatively, push data into an Azure AI Search index, which has no restrictions on data source type.
- Azure AI Search works with several popular formats, including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel; Adobe PDF; and PNG, RTF, JSON, HTML, and XML.
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