Getting Started With Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services

This article is in continuation of my articles related to Cognitive Services. I came across some complicated articles on Cognitive Services, but as I've been working on this Service for the last six months, I thought of writing simple, step by step articles on the same.

If you have landed directly on this article, I also recommend you read the following.

As defined, Cognitive Services provides the best suite for having interactive, automated models of the Application. It helps to build powerful intelligence into the Applications to enable natural and contextual interactions.

The Web Language Model API, as described by Microsoft, uses the power of language models trained on the Web-scale data. Also, it automates a variety of standard, natural language processing tasks named as state-of-the-art language modeling APIs.

Word combination probability

Calculates the joint probability that a specific word sequence will appear together.

Word sequence probability

Calculates the conditional probability that a particular word will follow a given sequence of words.

Predictive text

Gets a list of words (completions) most likely to follow a given sequence of the words.

Word breaking

Inserts spaces into a string of words that lack spaces, such as a hashtag or a part of a URL.

We will learn more about Web Language Model API in the later articles. To start with, let's create Cognitive account to use Web Language Model API, using Azure portal.

Here, let's assume that you have Azure portal account. If not, create your free Azure account.

Once done with account creation, Click '+’ => Category, Intelligence + analytics => Services, Cognitive Services APIs.

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Fill in the details, mentioned below.

Account Name
Unique name for cognitive Web Language Model API account.
Subscription
Free or in case of any subscription you have, it must be selected.
API Type
Cognitive Service provides a set of awesome APIs. For this article, I will go with Web Language Model API.
Pricing Tier
As per selected API, the pricing option will be listed. Select anyone among the listed options.
Resource Group
Can select existing Resource group or create a new.
Account Name
weblangwithKasam
Subscription
I have selected my subscription.
Resource Group
I created a new resource group to group Cognitive related Services and named it CodeCognitivewithKasam.
API Type
Cognitive Services provides a set of awesome APIs. For this article, select Web Language Model API.

Currently, Cognitive Service is in preview and hence only available at Western US locations. Once we select Web Language Model API from the list of APIs, the location will get set to ' West US'.

Pricing Tier

For selected Web Language Model API selected, the below pricing options are listed. Let's select Free as pricing tier. You can go with other options, which are available in the free trial account.

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Once done with choosing the pricing tier, click on "Legal Terms" option. A blade with the detailed terms will be displayed.

Read it carefully and subsequently click, I Agree => Create.

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After successful creation, the box, shown below can be seen in dashboard (if you opted to pin it, while creating it).

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Click Resource groups => CodeCognitivewithKasam (resource group selected) => Overview. Web Language Model API cognitive account , which is created will be listed. Click on the account name.

Overview lists all the details associated with Web Language Model API Cognitive account.

Endpoint is the base URL of RESTful Web Language Model API, provided by Microsoft.

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Click on Keys under Resource Management. This will list the key details (Key 1, Key 2), which we will be used in our Application to leverage Web Language Model API Services.

We can also regenerate this key by clicking Regenerate Key option available, as shown below.

Click on Quick Start for a quick introduction of Cognitive Services, along with API documentation to use Cognitive Web Language Model APIs.

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Summary

How easy it is to get started with Cognitive Services. By now, we saw how effortlessly we can create Cognitive Services Web Language Model API account, using Microsoft Azure portal.

We can use the keys being generated to allow our app to communicate with the super intelligent Web Language Model API. In later articles, we will use the keys and look at how this can be used in our Application. I would recommend you to try this and be ready with the keys.

Happy Azure coding.