We continue our Building the Future series with a focus on two of the largest providers of AI cloud services. Microsoft harnesses its Microsoft Azure cloud platform while Amazon continues to add more and more services to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
To help you understand all the potential of AI, below we have produced a short guide and overview to the services each of these companies provide as of October 2022.
Amazon Web Services Overview
Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a number of tools developed to help businesses integrate machine learning capabilities into their products, websites, apps and more.
Amazon provides open-source access to code from AWS, and free access to their machine learning tools for the first 12 months of use, with the exception of Amazon SageMaker.
In total, there are seven machine learning tools that come with AWS:
This article will provide a brief overview of each tool and their specific applications for business automation.
Polly
Polly is AWS’ text-to-speech AI, converting text inputs into realistic speech. Using machine learning, Polly can synthesize human voices in dozens of languages. Polly Brand Voice is an extension of this technology that allows brands to generate a unique sounding voice for exclusive use.
Transcribe
Transcribe performs the opposite function of Polly, converting human speech into text transcripts. This technology is incredibly useful for subtitling and transcribing phone calls and other media into searchable and readable formats.
SageMaker
The most unique of Amazon’s machine learning tools, SageMaker is used for building, training and deploying AI models. Like all AI models, SageMaker uses extensive data inputs to generate unique outputs. Through the AWS cloud, SageMaker has access to an incredible amount of data for training new models.
LexLex is an AI language model, popularly used as a “chatbot”. Lex is most useful for applications as an automated chatting tool interacting with customers. The model is more than capable as a virtual assistant, automating FAQs for businesses.
Rekognition
Rekognition is a pre-trained machine learning tool for image and video analysis. These capabilities are conventionally known as “computer vision”, and can be used for a variety of tasks including facial detection and recognition, content moderation and object identification.
Comprehend
Like Lex, Comprehend is also a language model. It is intended for use in analyzing language rather than as a chat tool. Comprehend can identify themes, make insights and classify documents all by interpreting written inputs.
Translate
As the name suggests, Translate is the translation extension from Amazon’s language models. The tool is an AI neural network offering incredible accuracy, natural sound and partially customizable translation capabilities.
Microsoft Azure Overview
Following the Amazon model, Microsoft Azure provides similar tools for machine learning and automation applications. Also, like Amazon, all services are either free or available through a 12 month free trial.
There are six AI-specific Azure tools:
- Azure Machine Learning
- Cognitive Services
- Applied AI Services
- Cognitive Search
- Bot Services
- OpenAI Service
This article will provide a brief overview of each tool and their specific applications.
Azure Machine Learning
Similar to Amazon SageMaker, Azure ML can be used for building and training AI machine learning models with an intuitive user interface. BMW and FedEx are two of a number of companies using the tool for AI development.
Cognitive Services
Cognitive Services offers pre-trained models for a variety of tasks ranging from text-to-speech and speech-to-text to translation, voice recognition and facial recognition.
Applied AI Services
This tool includes both the Cognitive Search and Bot Services tools. Cognitive Search is Microsoft’s cloud-based search tool that is useful for website applications, while Bot Services is useful for developing chatbots and other virtual assistants.
OpenAI Service
This service provides Azure users access to the Application Programming Interface (API) from independent company OpenAI. Through this tool, users can access OpenAI’s incredibly powerful GPT-3 language model, useful for code generation and app development.
The Dura Digital Takeaway
At an incredibly low price point, both AWS and Microsoft Azure provide powerful tools for businesses looking to automate some aspect of their operations. These AI models can allow businesses to embrace a range of entirely new possibilities, from chatbots and virtual assistants to machine learning tools.
At Dura Digital we continually invest in learning new technologies so that we can provide you, our customers, broad scale insights and awareness that help you transform your business. Contact us to discuss how we can help you advance your business leveraging the power of machine learning and AI.
