Overview of AI Builder

Welcome Introduction

Hello everyone, this is Raza Dorani. Welcome to the R&D Show. Hey everyone, this is Daniel Christian, and thanks for joining us. Absolutely, and today our topic is all about AI. Speaking of AI, I know Dan spoke at a user group this week where he demonstrated AI. Dan, would you like to tell us what you did this week?

This week has been a very AI-centric week for me. I got invited to speak at the Portland UG, I think it was Tuesday night, and I did a session with AI and Power Automate. It was very Power Automate-centric, and even there, I had to cover it at a bigger level. There was a good audience with a lot of good questions, so there's definitely a lot of appetite for this topic and it has grown. One of the things I pointed out to them was that AI is not something new anymore. It's been around for a year and a half, and it's maturing. It's definitely tried and tested, and amazing questions came up over there, so I told them to join this one because we have a really good person to speak on this topic, and I personally am very excited.

AI Builder Introduction

AI Builder is a topic that is very close to my heart as well. When AI Builder came out for the Power Platform, it piqued my interest, and I was one of the lucky ones in the MVP community who got the opportunity to work with the product team on the initial components of it. I got the private preview access early on. I have done several projects over the years on AI Builder, using a lot of those components like form processing and business card scanning. AI Builder has changed a lot in the last year with many more additions and a lot more power to it.

We have someone who lives, eats, and breathes AI Builder, and Dan and I thought about bringing Mr. AI Builder himself, Joe Fernandez, from Microsoft. Hello, Joe, how are you?

AI Builder Demonstration

Thank you, Reza and Daniel, for having me. I am super excited to be here. Today, I will give an overview of AI Builder for those who might not know about it. We will also explore what's new and there might be some surprises at the end.

AI Builder sits within the Power Platform. Power Platform is Microsoft's low-code/no-code platform, which includes Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents. These applications allow you to build your own custom apps, automations, chatbots, and dashboards without having any programming knowledge.

AI Builder Capabilities

AI Builder capabilities are categorized into four pillars:

Documents: Including form processing, business card reader, and invoice processing.
Language and Text: Including sentiment analysis, text translation, and category classification.
Images: Including object detection and image classification.
Structured Data: Involves predictive analysis based on historical data.

Joe explained that AI Builder is built on top of Azure AI, meaning it draws from the existing and mature capabilities of Azure's Cognitive Services. He demonstrated how easily AI can be added to Power Platform components to automate tasks. AI models, such as invoice processing, can automatically extract relevant data from documents. Users can upload documents, tag information areas, and then use the trained model in Power Automate or Power Apps.

Interactive Demo and Questions

Joe showcased a real-time demo of training an AI model for form processing and explained how AI Builder helps automate workflows by integrating it with Power Automate. Common user questions were addressed regarding licensing, document formats supported by AI Builder, learning improvements through user feedback, signature extraction capabilities, and handling complex table structures.

Upcoming Features and Roadmap

Joe unveiled some surprises, including the introduction of a new AI Builder logo and upcoming features such as support for unstructured documents, capability enhancement for self-learning models based on user feedback, and multiple owner collaboration for AI models.

Closing Remarks

Raza and Daniel thanked Joe for being part of the show and for his insightful presentation. Dan and Raza encouraged viewers to follow their social handles for future updates and concluded by appreciating the audience for attending the session.

Keywords

AI Builder
Power Platform
Form Processing
Invoice Processing
Azure AI
Cognitive Services
Machine Learning
Document Automation
Sentiment Analysis
Predictive Analysis

FAQ

Q: What is AI Builder? A: AI Builder is a Microsoft Power Platform service designed to provide AI capabilities through a low-code/no-code environment. It includes features for form processing, sentiment analysis, object detection, and more.

Q: Can AI Builder process different document formats? A: AI Builder supports PDF, PNG, JPEG, and TIFF formats for document processing.

Q: How are AI Builder models licensed? A: AI Builder uses AI Builder credits that can be obtained through add-ons or included in premium Power Apps and Power Automate licenses.

Q: Can AI Builder learn and improve automatically based on user feedback? A: The upcoming feedback loop feature will allow AI Builder models to learn and improve automatically by integrating user feedback, enhancing model performance over time.

Q: How soon does a new Azure Cognitive Services feature appear in AI Builder? A: AI Builder aims for feature parity with Azure Cognitive Services; the time to incorporate new features depends on the feature's complexity and demand but generally aims for alignment as quickly as possible.