Spoiler alert: It doesn’t blink, but it learns.
A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have guessed I’d be spending my Sunday teaching an AI model how to look at pictures—and make sense of them. But here we are. I’ve officially completed the “Analyze Images” module in Microsoft’s AI Engineer career path, and I’m buzzing with excitement.
Let’s talk about how computers “see”—and what I learned along the way.
🚀 My Mission: Analyze Images with Azure AI Vision
This was the first hands-on step in the Create Computer Vision Solutions in Azure AI learning path. In the simplest terms, I learned how to use Azure’s AI services to teach a computer to look at an image and answer:
What’s in this picture?
Think:
- “A dog in front of a house.” (📸 Caption)
- “#dog, #house, #pet, #outdoors.” (🏷️ Tags)
- “There’s a dog in the bottom-left corner.” (📦 Object detection)
- “A person is standing near the dog.” (🧍 People recognition)
This is image analysis—where AI doesn’t just look at pictures, it actually understands what’s inside them.
🔍 What the Module Covers
The module focused on using the Azure Vision API to:
- Tag and describe images
- Detect text with OCR
- Identify adult or racy content
- Generate confidence scores for predictions
All of this can be done using just a few lines of code—or even via a no-code playground!
🧪 My Hands-On Experience
Using Azure’s Vision Studio, I uploaded images, ran analysis, and received tags like “road,” “bicycle,” and “person”—with accuracy scores! It was like showing a robot a photo and asking, “What do you see?” And it answered confidently.
🤯 What Surprised Me
- Its speed—results appeared almost instantly
- Its accuracy—even in tricky lighting conditions
- The confidence scoring system—very transparent
🧠 What I Learned
AI “sees” using training data, pre-built models, and lots of pixels. With Azure, it felt like playing with high-end AI tools—without needing deep programming skills.
💡 Next Ideas
- Build a tool to describe images aloud
- Filter inappropriate uploads automatically
- Combine Vision and Language for smart chatbots
🧭 Your Turn
Want to try it yourself?
- Go to the Analyze Images module
- Use the Vision Studio (no code needed!)
- Show the AI your dog photos and see what it thinks 🐶
🌟 Final Thoughts
Learning how AI sees the world has been humbling. We take for granted how easily our brains identify a cat, a car, or a coffee cup. But getting a machine to do that? It’s a whole new kind of creativity—and precision.
I’ve only just started scratching the surface of computer vision. Next up in the AI Voyager journey: training AI to classify images (can it tell a muffin from a chihuahua?). Can’t wait to share that one.
– André Barnard, AI Explorer