Configuring an Environment to Support AI Services

In this chapter, we’re going to begin exploring how to obtain and set up the various services and environments you’re going to need to perform the exercises in this book.

Since this book is primarily focused on working with the AI services available in the Microsoft ecosystem, we’ll spend the most time working with the Azure and Power Platform services. At the end of the chapter, we’ll walk through getting connected to other AI platforms in case you want to use those as part of your learning as well.

Note

Some of these services may have free trials available for individual interactive usage, but most will require some form of payment for anything that accesses resources programmatically, such as from a Power App. You may need to budget accordingly to take full advantage of the available platforms.

For those who are only going to use AI in low-code scenarios (such as AI Builder or as OpenAI actions...