Creating Azure AI Services

Azure AI services provide a set of REST APIs that developers can call to quickly add artificial intelligence to their applications. Services include language, speech, vision, document intelligence, Decision, and Metric Advisor.

You can create many of these services individually, but it makes sense to create an Azure AI Vision Service if you want to use a service from more than one category.

Navigate to the Azure Portal and log in.

Click the [Create a resource] button (Fig. 1) and search for "ai services," as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

From the list of results, select the "Azure AI services" panel (Fig. 3), expand the menu, and select the [Create | Azure AI services] option, as shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

The "Create Azure AI services" dialog displays with the "Basics" tab selected, as shown in Fig. 5.

Create Azure AI Services Dialog, Basics Tab

Fig. 5

At the "Subscription" dropdown, select the subscription in which you want to create this OpenAI service. Many of you will have only one subscription, so you will not need to choose anything here.

At the "Resource group" field, select the resource group where you want to create the OpenAI service or click the "Create new" link to create a new resource group to add the OpenAI service. A resource group is a logical grouping of Azure resources you would like to manage together.

At the "Region" dropdown, select an Azure region in which to create the OpenAI service. Consider the location of the people and services that will be using this service to minimize latency.

At the "Name" field, enter a unique name for this OpenAI service.

As of this writing, the "Pricing tier" dropdown lists only "Standard S0." Select this option.

Check the checkbox indicating that you will adhere to the Responsible AI terms listed at the bottom.

Fig. 6 shows the "Network" tab. It is unnecessary to change anything on this tab, but it allows you to restrict access to the service to specific networks and configure private endpoints for the account.

Create Azure AI Services Dialog, Network Tab

Fig. 6

Fig. 7 shows the "Identity" tab. It is unnecessary to change anything on this tab, but it allows you to assign user managed identity for these services.

Create Azure AI Services Dialog, Identity Tab

Fig. 7

Fig. 8 shows the "Tags" tab. It is not necessary to change anything on this tab, but you can apply name-value pairs to this resource that you may use to filter or sort your reports.

Create Azure AI Services Dialog, Tags Tab

Fig. 8

Fig. 9 shows the "Review + create" tab. If you made any errors, such as leaving a required field empty or selecting an inconsistent combination of options, these errors will be listed here, and you will need to correct them before you can proceed.

Create Azure AI Services Dialog, Review + Create Tab

Fig. 9

After correcting any errors, click the [Create] button (Fig. 10) to start creating the Azure OpenAI service.

Fig. 10

After a short time, a confirmation message similar to the one in Fig. 11 will display, indicating that the Azure OpenAI service has been created.

Fig. 11

Click the [Go to resource] button (Fig. 12).

Fig. 12

Currently, this button navigates to the resource group. Click the Azure OpenAI service to show the "Overview" blade of the newly created Azure OpenAI service, as shown in Fig. 13.

Fig. 13

In this article, I showed you how to create an Azure AI service, giving you access to Artificial Intelligence functionality through simple REST API calls.