Microsoft Cognitive Services is a collection of intelligence and knowledge APIs that enable developers to make their applications more intelligent, engaging and discoverable. Cognitive Services includes intelligent APIs that allow systems to see, hear, speak, understand and interpret needs using natural methods of communication; and knowledge APIs that bring the power of the web to developers. Below are the September updates for Microsoft Cognitive Services APIs.
Computer Vision API
On September 14th, the Computer Vision API will be available in China. Additions include the ability to transact in Chinese currency.
Microsoft’s Computer Vision API is able to extract rich information from images to categorize and process visual data and protect your users from unwanted content. No changes have been made to the Computer Vision API but it is now available on the Mooncake Sovereign Cloud in China and includes the ability to transact in Chinese currency.
Learn more about the Computer Vision API at Cognitive Services Computer Vision.
Face API
On September 14, the Face API will be available in China. Additions include the ability to transact in Chinese currency.
Microsoft’s FACE API can detect human faces and compare similar ones, organize people into groups according to visual similarity, and identify previously tagged people in images. No changes have been made to the Face API but it is now available on the Mooncake Sovereign Cloud in China and includes the ability to transact in Chinese currency.
Learn more about the Face API at Cognitive Services Face.
Speaker Recognition API
Speaker Recognition only needs 30 seconds of speech to identify speakers.
Speaker Recognition previously required 60 seconds of speech for both enrollment and identifciation operations. Speaker Recognition API now accepts any length of speech, although it is recommended that users input 30 seconds for enrollment and 10 seconds for identification to get the best API experience.
Learn more about the Speaker Recognition API at Cognitive Services Speaker Recognition.
Language Understanding Intelligence Service (LUIS) API
LUIS now supports German, Portuguese, and Japanese. Additionally, we created a C# SDK for LUIS endpoints. Entities have been updated for greater flexibility, hierarchies have been added, and we crated a new entity type: the composite entity. Reminder: the number of free LUIS transactions is changing from 100,000 to 10,000 a month for the trial offer.
LUIS understands language contextually, so your app communicates with people in the way they speak. New LUIS features make the service more powerful for you and your users.
- New languages – German, Portuguese and Japanese now supported in addition to the already supported English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Chinese.
- Entities have been updated to provide more flexibility.
- Composite Entity has been added.
- Hierarchical entities have been added to allow editing.
Learn more about the Language Understanding Intelligence Service API at Cognitive Services LUIS.
Emotion API
On September 14th, the Emotion API will be available in China. Additions include the ability to transact in Chinese currency.
Microsoft’s Emotion API analyzes faces to detect a range of feelings and personalize your app’s responses. No changes have been made to the Emotion API but it is now available on the Mooncake Sovereign Cloud in China and includes the ability to transact in Chinese currency.
Learn more about the Emotion API at Cognitive Services Emotion.
Bing Speech API
The Bing Speech API’s authentication endpoint and SDK namespaces are changing as of September 21. If you download the new SDK and used the Azure portal to obtain keys, you will need a new subscription key. Old keys will still work for six months before deprecation. All users will need to change the reference to the SDK namespace.
The Bing Speech API converts audio to text, understands intent, and converts text back to speech for natural responsiveness.
Learn more about the Bing Speech API at Cognitive Services Bing Speech.