Azure Cognitive Services

Overview

Azure Cognitive Services are a suite of AI services and APIs to build intelligent apps for vision, speech, language, and decision-making.

Real-life Use Cases

• Cloud Architect: Add speech-to-text and translation to global apps.

• DevOps Engineer: Automate image analysis in CI/CD pipelines.

Terraform Example

resource "azurerm_cognitive_account" "main" {
  name                = "cogsvcaccount"
  location            = azurerm_resource_group.main.location
  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.main.name
  kind                = "CognitiveServices"
  sku_name            = "S0"
}

Bicep Example

resource cogAccount 'Microsoft.CognitiveServices/accounts@2023-05-01' = {
  name: 'cogsvcaccount'
  location: resourceGroup().location
  kind: 'CognitiveServices'
  sku: {
    name: 'S0'
  }
  properties: {}
}

Azure CLI Example

az cognitiveservices account create --name cogsvcaccount --resource-group my-rg --kind CognitiveServices --sku S0 --location westeurope

Best Practices

• Use managed identities for secure access.

• Monitor API usage and costs.

Common Pitfalls

• Not securing API keys.

• Over-provisioning resources.

Joke: Why did the app use Cognitive Services? It wanted to see, hear, and speak for itself!