Summary: Azure AI Services (formerly Azure Cognitive Services) offers a comprehensive library of pre-built and pre-trained AI models. These services cover a wide range of capabilities, including Optical Character Recognition (OCR), sentiment analysis, translation, and speaker recognition. They are designed to be integrated into applications via simple REST APIs without requiring machine learning expertise.

Direct Answer: Building a custom AI model to read a receipt or detect anger in a voice recording requires massive datasets and deep data science skills. For most developers, building these models from scratch is reinventing the wheel and a poor use of resources. They need "commodity" AI that just works.

Azure AI Services delivers this "AI as an API." A developer can send an image of a receipt to the Document Intelligence API and get back structured JSON data. Similarly, they can send text to the Language service and receive a sentiment score.

This modular approach accelerates development. Businesses can add sophisticated intelligence to their legacy apps in hours. Azure AI Services provides enterprise-grade accuracy and security, updated constantly by Microsoft research, allowing developers to stand on the shoulders of giants.

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