Getting Started With Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services – Speaker Recognition API

Introduction

In this article, we will learn how to get started with Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services – Speaker Recognition API.

Overview

This is in continuation of my articles with respect to Cognitive Services. I have come across some complicated articles in regards to Cognitive Services, but as I've been working on this Service for the last six months, I thought of writing a simple, step by step article in regards to Cognitive Services.

If you have landed directly on this article, I also recommend you to read,

• Getting started with Microsoft Cognitive Services – Face API
• Getting started with Microsoft Cognitive Services – Emotion API
• Getting started with Microsoft Cognitive Services – LUIS API
• Getting Started With Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services - Recommendations API
• Getting Started With Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services - Speaker Recognition API
• Getting Started With Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services - Text Analytics API
• Getting Started With Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services - Computer Vision API
• Getting Started With Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services – Web Language Model API
• Getting Started With Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services - Bing Autosuggest API

As defined, Cognitive Services provides the best suite for having an interactive, automated model of Application. It helps to build powerful intelligence into the Applications to enable natural and contextual interactions.

Speaker Recognition API, as described by Microsoft, uses speech to identify and authenticate the individual speakers. It gives your app the ability to know who is talking.

Speaker verification

Use voice for authentication. It verifies speakers through a simple pass phrase.

Speaker identification

It identifies the speech with who is the speaker. It compares the speech from the group of known speakers. It also plays a super intelligent speaker identification tool in our Application.

We will learn more about Speaker Recognition API in later articles. To start with, let's create a cognitive account to use Speaker Recognition API, using Azure portal.

Here, let's assume that you have Azure portal account. If not, create your free Azure account.

Once done with account creation, click '+’ => Category, Intelligence + analytics => Services, Cognitive Services APIs.



Fill in the details, mentioned below.

• Account Name
  Unique name for cognitive Speaker Recognition API account. 
  
  
• Subscription
  Free or in case of any subscription, you must select it here. 
  
  
• API Type
  Cognitive services provides a set of awesome APIs. For this article, it will go with Speaker Recognition 
  
  
• API Pricing Tier
  As per selected API, pricing option will be listed. Select anyone among the listed options. 
  
  
• Resource Group
  The user can select an existing resource group or create a new one. 
  
  
  
  
• Account Name
  SpeakerRecogwithKasam. 
  
  
• Subscription
  Selected my subscription. 
  
  
• Resource Group
  Create a new resource group for grouping Cognitive related Services and name it as CodeCognitivewithKasam 

API Type

Cognitive services provides a set of awesome APIs. For this article, I will go with Speaker Recognition API.



Currently, Service is in preview and hence only available at Western US locations. Once we select Speaker Recognition API from the list of API's, location will be set to ' West US'

Pricing Tier

For Speaker Recognition API selected, the pricing option, mentioned below is listed. Let's select 'Free' as pricing tier. You can go with other options, which are available in free trial account.



Click Legal Terms option. Blade with details terms will be displayed. Read it carefully and click = > I Agree => Create.



After successful creation, the box, mentioned below can be seen in the dashboard.



Click Resource groups => CodeCognitivewithKasam (resource group selected) => Overview, Speaker Recognition API cognitive account created will be listed. Click on the account name.

Overview will list all the details associated with Speaker Recognition API Cognitive account.

Endpoint is the base URL of Restful Speaker Recognition API provided by Microsoft. 



Click on keys under Resource Management. This will list the key details (Key 1, Key 2), which we will be using in our Application to leverage Speaker Recognition API Services.

We can also regenerate these keys by clicking Regenerate Key option available, as shown below.



Click on Quick Start for a quick introduction of Cognitive Services, along with API documentation, to use cognitive Speaker Recognition API's.



Summary

How easy it is to get started with Cognitive Services. By now, we saw how effortlessly, we created Cognitive Services Speaker Recognition API account, using Microsoft Azure portal.

We can use these keys being generated to allow our app to communicate with super intelligent Speaker Recognition API.

In later articles, we will use these keys and look at how this can be used in our Application.

I would recommend trying this and being ready with the keys.

Happy Azure coding.