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Azure Cognitive Services Azure AI Services

Legacy names Azure Cognitive Services, Microsoft Project Oxford

Portfolio of prebuilt and customizable cloud AI APIs and models spanning speech, vision, language, translation, decision, and document extraction.

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Naming timeline

  1. Microsoft Project Oxford

    · Build 2015 Research Preview

    Initial preview portfolio of RESTful machine learning APIs for vision, speech, and language understanding.

  2. Azure Cognitive Services

    · Build 2016 Product Launch

    Rebranded from Project Oxford to Microsoft Cognitive Services and integrated into Azure as Azure Cognitive Services.

  3. Azure AI ServicesCurrent name

    · Azure AI Brand Alignment

    Rebranded from Azure Cognitive Services to Azure AI Services (and subsequently surfaced as Foundry Tools within Microsoft Foundry).

What is Azure Cognitive Services called now?

Azure Cognitive Services is now called Azure AI Services, with the latest change on 18 July 2023 (Azure AI Brand Alignment). Earlier names covered by this entry also include Microsoft Project Oxford. Portfolio of prebuilt and customizable cloud AI APIs and models spanning speech, vision, language, translation, decision, and document extraction. Only the customer-facing name changed; the underlying technical identifiers remain backward compatible.

Also known as

  • Foundry Tools
  • Microsoft Cognitive Services
  • Azure AI multi-service account

Technical identifiers

Technical identifiers unchanged. Only the customer-facing product name changed; the APIs, CLI commands, IAM roles and Terraform resources below keep their legacy identifiers for backward compatibility.

ARM Resource Providers (Microsoft.*)Microsoft.CognitiveServices/accounts *.cognitiveservices.azure.com
Azure CLI (az) / PowerShellaz cognitiveservices az cognitiveservices account
Entra ID / Azure RBAC RolesCognitive Services User Cognitive Services Contributor Cognitive Services OpenAI User
Terraform Resources (azurerm_*)azurerm_cognitive_account azurerm_cognitive_deployment

The ARM resource provider Microsoft.CognitiveServices/accounts, az cognitiveservices CLI, and azurerm_cognitive_account Terraform resource retain their Cognitive Services naming.

Notes & disambiguation

  • Introduced in 2015 as Microsoft Project Oxford and launched in 2016 as Microsoft Cognitive Services (later Azure Cognitive Services), the suite was rebranded to Azure AI Services in July 2023.
  • With the expansion of Microsoft Foundry in 2025–2026, Azure AI Services are also surfaced across Microsoft Learn and the portal as Foundry Tools (for example, Azure Vision in Foundry Tools and Azure Speech in Foundry Tools).
  • All underlying technical identifiers—including the Microsoft.CognitiveServices/accounts ARM resource provider, az cognitiveservices CLI command group, Cognitive Services User/Contributor RBAC roles, and azurerm_cognitive_account Terraform resource—remain unchanged.

Sources & official documentation

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