Application programming interfaces (APIs)

5 minutes

An application programming interface (API) is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. The aim of APIs is to help developers build intelligent applications without having direct AI or data science skills.

The API is the interface between the developer's code and the components of complex AI systems. For example, the goal of Azure Cognitive Services is to help developers create applications that can see, hear, speak, understand, and even begin to reason. It enables developers to create innovative applications to transform business and society.

APIs can be categorized into families.

Decision APIs

Anomaly detector
Content moderator
Personalizer

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Language APIs

Language understanding LUIS
QnA maker
Text analytics
Form recognizer
Video indexer

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Search APIs

Bing news search
Bing video search
Bing web search
Bing Autosuggest
Bing custom search
Bing entity search
Bing image search
Bing visual search
Bing local business search (BLBS)
Bing spell check

Speech APIs

Speech services
Speaker recognition
Bing search
Translator speech

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Vision APIs

Computer vision
Custom vision service
Face API
Form recognizer
Ink recognizer
Video indexer

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