Top AI APIs of 2023: Build Intelligent Apps

Are you a developer or tech enthusiast looking to add intelligence and functionality to your applications or services? If so, you’re in the right place.

In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the AI APIs available that allow developers to solve problems quickly.

Whether you have a use case for speech recognition, language processing, image and video analysis, or content creation, AI APIs have covered you.

Google Cloud AI

APIs

Text to Speech API

Ever thought about turning text into natural-sounding speech? With Google Cloud’s Text-to-Speech API, you can do just that. You can create audiobooks, podcasts, and more, supporting over 50+ languages and variants.

Speech-to-Text API

This API is your go-to when converting audio into text. It’s perfect for making transcripts of meetings or lectures. And the best part? It supports over 125 languages and variants.

Video Intelligence API

Want to get more from your videos?

The Video Intelligence API is the answer. It helps you identify objects, people, and actions in videos. As a developer, these AI APIs are incredibly useful for creating intelligent applications.

Vertex AI

Vertex AI, a product of Google Cloud, is your one-stop shop for all things machine learning (ML).

All-in-One ML Solution: You get everything you need for ML in one place. This means you can focus on building ML models without getting lost in the logistics. GCP Recommends migrating from AutoML and AI Platform to Vertex AI.

Ready-to-Use Models: Vertex AI comes with a treasure trove of pre-trained models. You can start with them quickly, saving you precious effort and time.

No Infrastructure Worries: You don’t have to manage ML infrastructure. It covers all the hardware and software details, leaving you free to focus on your ML models.

Recently, Google Cloud has launched a generative ai studio with the PaLM2 models for Chat, Text, and Code, which opens up a wide range of use cases ranging from text summarization, text generation, question-answering, etc. This will allow developers to leverage ai into applications.

I have worked on model deployment on Vertex AI using the Kubeflow pipelines feature. Vertex AI is integrated with all the GCP Services, such as IAM, Storage, Logging, etc.

You can start leveraging these APIs by using SDKs. The Google Cloud SDKs are available in different languages.

AWS AI Services

AWS has a suite of AI Services you can integrate directly into your applications. Most of their pricing is Pay-as-you-go.

Amazon Polly

Amazon Polly is your go-to service if you are operating in AWS and want to convert text to speech.

What’s great about Amazon Polly is the variety of voices it provides. You can pick the perfect voice to match your application. Plus, you can tweak the voice output, like adjusting the speed or pitch.

Since it is integrated with AWS, you can use the Lambda function to generate the speech when the file lands in the S3 Bucket.

Amazon Polly is versatile and can be used in many ways:

Audiobook Creation: With Polly, you can create audiobooks that can be enjoyed across different devices.

E-Learning Content Enhancement: Polly can add audio to e-learning materials, like tutorials or lectures.

Marketing Content Creation: Polly can help create marketing materials like product descriptions and promo videos.

So, as a developer, Amazon Polly is worth checking out if you’re looking for a powerful AI tool.

Amazon Comprehend

Amazon Comprehend, an AI service, is like a detective for text. It uses natural language processing (NLP) to discover valuable insights hidden in your text, whether it’s identifying key phrases, sentiments, or other information.

Here’s what you can do with it:

Sentiment Analysis: Amazon Comprehend is great at sentiment analysis. It can tell whether the text is positive, negative, or neutral. So, if you’re looking to gauge customer feedback or keep an eye on social media chatter, this is your go-to tool.

Entity Recognition: With Amazon Comprehend, you can extract entities like people, places, organizations, and products from the text. This feature comes in handy for things like suggesting products or detecting fraud.

Phrase Extraction: Amazon Comprehend can also pull out key phrases from the text. This is super useful for summarising text or generating search results.

Amazon Textract

Amazon Textract is a machine learning service that pulls text and data from scanned documents like a pro. It scans various documents, including invoices, receipts, and contracts, and picks out the text, handwriting, tables, and forms.

Speed up your invoice processing: With Textract, you can swiftly pull out data from invoices, such as the invoice number, date, amount, and line items. This tool can be a game-changer if you’re a business with invoices.

Keep track of your receipts: Textract can automatically pull out data from receipts, like the purchase date, amount, and items purchased. So if you’re a business trying to keep tabs on expenses or need to reimburse employees, this tool can make your life easier.

Simplify form processing: Textract can pull data from forms, including medical records, insurance claims, and tax forms. If your business has many forms to process, this tool can help you speed through them.

AWS Sagemaker

AWS Sagemaker, an Amazon service, is a one-stop solution for those looking to dive into machine learning. With its user-friendly features, you don’t need to be a seasoned developer to get started. It’s a fully managed service helping you build, train, and deploy machine learning models effortlessly.

Let’s look at some ways you can use AWS Sagemaker:

Image classification: Whether you’re looking to identify products or detect fraud, AWS Sagemaker can classify images into various categories, making the task easier.

Natural language processing: Want to gain insights from customer feedback or monitor social media? AWS Sagemaker can process natural language text, giving you the necessary information.

Speech recognition: From customer service to voice assistants, AWS Sagemaker can transcribe speech into text, making communication more efficient.

Machine translation: If you’re dealing with customer support or international marketing, AWS Sagemaker can translate text from one language to another, breaking down language barriers.

So, if you’re curious about machine learning like me, AWS Sagemaker could be a great place to start. As a DevOps engineer passionate about AI, I can tell you that tools like this are a game-changer.

I haven’t added all the AI Services provided by AWS, which might take a book to write. Here is the link if you want to explore more.

Azure Cognitive Services

Azure Cognito services provide multiple ready-to-use ML APIs categorized into speech, language, and vision.

Speech

Azure also provides Speech to Text and Text to speech APIs similar to AWS and GCP.

Speech to Text: Ever had a recording that you wished you could read instead? With this API, you can do precisely that. It can take speech (live or recorded) and turn it into text. And the best part? It’s not picky about accents or languages.

Text to Speech: Azure text-to-speech allows you to have a custom voice for the brand. You need to provide the voice recordings, and it will train a neural network so that you can get tailored to your needs.

Language

Entity Recognition: This API can identify entities in text, such as people, places, organisations, and products. This can be useful for applications such as product recommendations and fraud detection.

Sentiment Analysis: You can use this API to analyze the sentiment of text, such as whether it is positive, negative, or neutral. This can be useful for customer feedback and social media monitoring applications.

Vision

Regarding vision-related AI APIs, Azure Cognitive Services has got you covered.

First up, we have the Cognito Vision API. This handy tool lets you analyze images and videos, identifying everything from objects and faces to different scenes.

Then, we have Custom Vision which allows you to build and deploy your custom computer vision model.

OpenAI

OpenAI has given us GPT-3 and GPT-4, some of the best AI models. These large language models are trained on massive datasets and various tasks, so they’re pretty good at generating text, translating languages, creating content, and even answering tricky questions.

You can use these models with the GPT-3 & GPT-4 API. You can ask them to create some text, translate from one language to another, create different types of content, and even answer your burning questions.

Here’s what you can do with the GPT-3 & GPT-4 API:

Content creation: You can use the GPT-3 & GPT-4 API to create content like articles, blog posts, and social media posts.

Translation: Need to translate English to Spanish or French to German? The GPT-3 & GPT-4 API has got you covered.

Answering questions: Got a tricky question? The GPT-3 & GPT-4 API can give you an informative answer, even if it’s tricky.

Creative writing: You can use the GPT-3 & GPT-4 API to generate creative stuff like poems, code, scripts, music pieces, emails, letters, and more.

Apart from the models, OpenAI also exposes embeddings API, used for question answering and significant document summarization. OpenAI has recently launched a function-calling feature that allows the model to access data from external APIs.

I’ve had my fair share of experience with these models as a developer. I’ve even built my blog writing tool using GPT-3, GPT-4, and Google Cloud PaLM2 models. It’s incredible how much these AI models can do, and I’m excited to see how they’ll continue to evolve in 2023 and beyond.

IBM Watson

IBM Watson is the ML Service provided by IBM Cloud. It can be used for a variety of use cases, such as:

Natural language processing: Ever thought about creating your customer service chatbot or a virtual assistant? Well, IBM Watson can help you with that. It’s got this neat ability to understand and respond to natural language queries.

Machine learning: IBM Watson’s got your back if you’re into building machine learning models. You can do it all with Watson, whether for catching fraudsters or recommending products to customers.

Data analytics: IBM Watson can help you analyze data and pull out insights. It’s perfect for things like customer segmentation and market research.

Stability AI

Ever tried creating images with AI? If not, let me introduce you to the Stability AI API. It’s a simple-to-use tool that gives you the power to generate images using Stable Diffusion models.

You might wonder, “What’s so special about Stable Diffusion models?” They’re a new breed of generative models that are steadier and more manageable than their predecessors.

This makes them perfect for crafting images that are not just realistic but also packed with creativity.

So, if you’re looking for an AI API that offers stability, high-quality images, customization, and ease of use, Stability AI API is worth considering.

Wrapping Up

AI APIs have revolutionized developers’ work in a world where technology constantly evolves. They must call with API and the underlying ML Models; the Cloud Providers handle infrastructures.

By leveraging the power of artificial intelligence, these APIs enable you to add intelligence and functionality to your applications or services effortlessly.

From Google Cloud AI and AWS AI Services to Azure Cognitive Services and IBM Watson, developers have access to cutting-edge AI APIs that can cater to your specific needs.

So why wait?

Embrace the power of AI APIs and take your applications to the next level. With these tools at your disposal, the possibilities are endless. Stay curious, keep learning, and let AI APIs transform your development.