Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-901)

Duration: 2 days

This instructor-led workshop introduces foundational AI concepts and the Azure services used to build AI solutions. Based on Microsoft AI-901 content and extended with ETC, the course is delivered as a 2-day format with additional guidance, demos, and practical exercises.

Who Should Attend

• Professionals beginning their AI journey on Azure
• Developers and technical consultants who want to understand Azure AI capabilities
• Data and business professionals evaluating AI use cases
• Teams preparing for the Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-901) exam

Prerequisites

• Basic understanding of cloud concepts and Azure fundamentals
• Familiarity with core IT concepts and APIs
• Helpful but optional: basic Python syntax knowledge
• No prior machine learning experience required

Learning Goals

• Understand common AI workloads and responsible AI considerations
• Explain core machine learning principles and model lifecycle concepts
• Identify Azure services for computer vision scenarios
• Identify Azure services for natural language processing scenarios
• Understand generative AI concepts and Microsoft Foundry capabilities
• Prepare effectively for AI-901 certification objectives

Course Content

1. Introduction to AI concepts
   • Core AI terminology, workloads, and common business scenarios
   • Responsible AI principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability
   • Mapping use cases to Azure AI capabilities and service choices
2. Introduction to generative AI and agents
   • How generative AI models work and when to use them
   • Model selection, deployment options, and key configuration parameters
   • Agentic patterns: prompts, tool use, and basic single-agent solution concepts with Microsoft Foundry
3. Introduction to natural language processing concepts
   • Text analysis fundamentals: keyword extraction, entity recognition, sentiment analysis, and summarization
   • Language understanding scenarios and multilingual processing patterns
   • Building lightweight NLP solution flows with Azure AI services
4. Introduction to AI speech concepts
   • Speech recognition and speech synthesis capabilities
   • Speech-to-text and text-to-speech scenario design
   • Responding to spoken prompts in multimodal AI solution patterns
5. Introduction to computer vision concepts
   • Image analysis capabilities and common vision workloads
   • OCR and visual feature extraction fundamentals
   • Overview of image-generation model scenarios and constraints
6. Introduction to information extraction concepts
   • Extracting structured information from text, images, audio, and video
   • Information extraction patterns for forms, documents, and business content
   • Evaluating extraction quality, confidence, and responsible use in real-world pipelines

Hands-on Labs

• Explore Azure AI services in the Azure portal
• Build and test simple AI scenarios for vision and language
• Evaluate model output quality and responsible AI controls
• Walk through a basic generative AI workflow with grounding concepts

Outcomes

After this workshop, participants can describe key AI concepts, map business needs to Azure AI services, and confidently prepare for the AI-901 exam.

Development Environment

• Windows, macOS, or Linux
• Web browser and internet access
• Azure subscription for guided labs
• Optional: Visual Studio Code and Python for selected exercises