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May 2023

May 12

We're retiring Speech-to-text REST preview API v3.1-preview.1 on May 12, 2023

Target retirement date: May 12, 2023

We recently made the Speech-to-text REST API version 3.1 generally available. With this release, we'll retire the preview version v3.1-preview.1 on May 12, 2023.

  • Azure AI services
  • Retirements
  • Services
  • SDK and Tools
  • Features

April 2023

Apr 26

Continuous Language ID in Azure Speech Service

NOW AVAILABLE

Continual Language ID makes transcription and translation easier by identifying up to 10 languages in a single piece of audio continuously.

  • Azure AI services
  • Features

March 2023

Mar 14

Public preview: Azure Cognitive Service for Vision Powers State-of-the-Art Computer Vision Development

IN PREVIEW

Extract robust insights from images and video content across multiple industry domains

  • Microsoft Build
  • Features

February 2023

Feb 15

Public Preview: Azure Communication Services Chat for Bot Framework

IN PREVIEW

Build conversational AI experiences with Azure Communication Services. Use virtual chat agents to manage growing customer service needs and provide in-chat intelligence with the help of smart assistants.

  • SDK and Tools

November 2022

Nov 9

General availability: Multivariate Anomaly Detection

NOW AVAILABLE

Multivariate Anomaly Detection will allow you to evaluate multiple signals and the correlations between them to find sudden changes in data patterns.

  • Azure AI services
  • Services
  • Features

July 2022

Jul 15

Responsible AI investments and safeguards for Facial Recognition

NOW AVAILABLE

Target retirement date: July 01, 2023

The Cognitive Services team has updated our approach to facial recognition including adding a new Limited Access policy, removing AI classifiers of sensitive attributes and bolstering our investments in fairness and transparency.

  • Azure AI services
  • Azure AI Video Indexer
  • Compliance
  • Retirements
  • Regions & Datacenters
  • Services
  • Features

June 2022

Jun 1

General availability: Conversational language understanding

NOW AVAILABLE

Conversational language understanding includes multilingual transformer-based models as the underlying model architecture and results in significant accuracy improvements over its predecessor, LUIS.

  • Azure AI services
  • Features

May 2022

May 24

Public preview: Azure Cognitive Services updates

IN PREVIEW

Azure Cognitive Services is announcing the following preview updates at Build: Azure OpenAI Service and summarization capabilities in Azure Cognitive Service for Language.

  • Azure AI services
  • Microsoft Build
  • Services
May 24

Generally available: Azure Cognitive Service for Language

NOW AVAILABLE

Cognitive Service for Language now includes custom named entity recognition and custom text classification.

  • Azure AI services
  • Microsoft Build
  • Features
May 12

Generally available: OCR supports 164 languages in the Cognitive Services Computer Vision

NOW AVAILABLE

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.

  • Azure AI Vision
  • Azure AI services
  • Features

March 2022

Mar 30

General availability: Azure Cognitive Search implements debug sessions

NOW AVAILABLE

Streamline your Cognitive Search operations with debug sessions for building, testing, and modifying skillsets.

  • Azure AI Search
  • Services
  • Features
Mar 2

Public preview: Enhancements to Azure Form Recognizer for Azure Applied AI Services

IN PREVIEW

Azure Form Recognizer now supports extraction from custom documents, W-2 forms, access to the read API, additional human languages and enhancements.

  • Features

February 2022

Feb 2

Public preview: Anomaly Detector adds synchronous multivariate detection and improved anomaly interpretation

IN PREVIEW

Start using Anomaly Detector’s multivariate detection synchronously for quicker response, easier operations, and more informative result interpretation to help you analyze root causes.

  • Azure AI services
  • Features

January 2022

Jan 5

Public preview: Semantic Search update

IN PREVIEW

Semantic Search, a feature of Azure Cognitive Search, is now available for direct configuration in the Azure Portal.

  • Azure AI Search
  • Features
  • Pricing & Offerings

November 2021

Nov 3

Private preview: Azure OpenAI Service combines access to powerful GPT-3 language models with Azure’s enterprise capabilities

IN PREVIEW

Apply advanced language models to a variety of use cases with Azure OpenAI Service.

  • Azure AI services
  • Microsoft Ignite
  • Services
Nov 2

Azure Applied AI Services | Azure Cognitive Search updates now generally available

Azure Cognitive Search has expanded language and regional availability.

  • Azure AI services
  • Azure AI Search
  • Microsoft Ignite
  • Features
Nov 2

Azure Cognitive Service for Language now generally available

NOW AVAILABLE

Azure Cognitive Service for Language provides high-quality natural language capabilities, from sentiment analysis and entity extraction to automated question answering.

  • Azure AI services
  • Microsoft Ignite
  • Services
  • Features

October 2021

Oct 18

OCR (Read) supports 122 languages in the Cognitive Services Computer Vision public preview

IN 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.

  • Azure AI Vision
  • Azure AI services
  • Features

July 2021

Jul 6

Public Preview: Form Recognizer container support

IN PREVIEW

Announcing the public preview release of Form Recognizer containers. Form Recognizer is now also available in the following docker containers - Layout, Business Card, ID Document, Receipt, Invoice and Custom containers for you to run locally.

  • Azure AI services
  • Features

June 2021

Jun 24

General availability: Azure Cognitive Services Text Analytics for Health

NOW AVAILABLE

Now generally available, use Text Analytics for Health to detect words and phrases mentioned in unstructured text as entities in the healthcare and biomedical domain.

  • Azure AI services
  • Services
  • Features

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