Learning Microsoft Cognitive Services

Key Features

• Explore the capabilities of all 21 APIs released as part of the Cognitive Services platform
• Build intelligent apps that combine the power of computer vision, speech recognition, and language processing
• Give your apps human-like cognitive intelligence with this hands-on guide

Book Description

Microsoft has revamped its Project Oxford to launch the all new Cognitive Services platform—a set of 21 APIs to add speech, vision, language, and knowledge capabilities to apps.

This book will introduce you to all 21 APIs released as part of Cognitive Services platform and show you how to leverage their capabilities. More importantly, you’ll see how the power of these APIs can be combined to build real-world apps that have cognitive capabilities. The book is split into three sections: computer vision, speech recognition and language processing, and knowledge and search.

You will be taken through the vision APIs at first as this is very visual, and not too complex. The next part revolves around speech and language, which are somewhat connected. The last part is about adding real-world intelligence to apps by connecting them to Knowledge and Search APIs.

By the end of this book, you will be in a position to understand what Microsoft Cognitive Service can offer and how to use the different APIs.

What you will learn

• Identify a person through visual inspection and audio
• Reduce user effort by utilizing AI-like capabilities
• Understand how to analyze images and text in different manners
• Find out how to analyze images using Vision APIs
• Add video analysis to applications using Vision APIs
• Utilize Search to find anything you want
• Analyze text to extract information and explore the structure of the text

About the Author

Leif Henning Larsen is a software engineer based in Norway. After earning a degree in computer engineering, he went on to work with the design and configuration of industrial control systems, for the most part, in the oil and gas industry. Over the last few years, he has worked as a developer, developing and maintaining geographical information systems, working with .NET technology. In his spare time, he develops mobile apps and explores new technologies to keep up with a high-paced tech world.

You can find out more about him by checking his blog (http://blog.leiflarsen.org/) and following him on Twitter (https://twitter.com/leif_larsen) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhlarsen).

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Getting Started with Microsoft Cognitive Services
Chapter 2. Analyzing Images to Recognize a Face
Chapter 3. Analyzing Videos
Chapter 4. Letting Applications Understand Commands
Chapter 5. Speak with Your Application
Chapter 6. Understanding Text
Chapter 7. Extending Knowledge Based on Context
Chapter 8. Querying Structured Data in a Natural Way
Chapter 9. Adding Specialized Searches