Introduction

Azure AI Search is one of many cloud services Microsoft provides through the Microsoft Azure platform. It’s an information retrieval service for both traditional and generative AI searches.

Traditional search is commonplace, but generative AI search is a relatively new concept. Azure AI Search gives you more than the common features for both types of searches, and at scale.

In this lesson, you’ll acquire useful knowledge about what’s available for information retrieval from Azure, and how to best apply it when needed. You’ll be able to compare it with other services, considering features, pricing, and more, to make better-informed decisions when you deciding search capabilities for your app.

By the end of this lesson, you will learn to:

• Understand the core features and capabilities of Azure AI Search.
• Compare Azure AI Search with custom LangChain Retrieval-Augmented Generation Solutions.
• Set up an Azure AI Search service and index basic data.