Becoming Azure AI Certified

If you’re interested in developing your skill set in the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI), or simply learning more about how AI can help your organisation, you may want to consider becoming Azure AI certified. In this blog post, we will look at the Microsoft certifications available for Azure AI and provide tips on how to pass the exams.

Azure AI

With Azure AI, organisations can quickly create smart applications with easy-to-use APIs and flexible models. Azure services can be used for a wide range of purposes such as adding smart decision-making features to applications, getting insights from documents, integrating natural language processing into applications, transforming voice to text, verifying or recognising speakers with voice, translating text in real-time, and processing images and video for tasks like content moderation and object detection. You can find more information about Azure AI Services on the Microsoft Azure website.

Why become certified in Azure AI?

AI is a rapidly growing field with the potential to advance technology in many industries, it is only a matter of time before it becomes a part of our everyday work practices. Earning your Azure AI certifications is a great way to get a head start in becoming an AI power user by validating your knowledge of AI concepts and the related AI services and technical opportunities Azure offers.

What certifications are available?

Microsoft offers two certifications for Azure AI: Azure AI Fundamentals and Azure AI Engineer Associate. The choice between the two certifications depends on your level of expertise and career goals. If you are new to AI and machine learning, the Azure AI Fundamentals certification is a great place to start. It is designed to help you master the basics of AI and machine learning, along with the related AI services Azure offers. It’s great for beginners who want to be able to describe the use cases for different AI services in Azure. On the other hand, the Azure AI Engineer Associate certification is designed for those looking to take their skills to the next level. It is best suited for those at an intermediate level, who are looking to be able to build, train, and deploy AI solutions using Azure services; including cognitive services, bots, and agents.

How do I become certified?

To become Microsoft Certified in Azure AI you must pass the associated exam with a passing score of 700:

• Azure AI Fundamentals: Exam AI-900: Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals
• Azure AI Engineer Associate: Exam AI-102: Designing and Implementing a Microsoft Azure AI Solution.

Tips to help you prepare

Here are some tips to help you pass the exams:

• Review the study guide to help you prepare for the exam and understand the skills that will be measured.
• Study the relevant self-paced content on Microsoft Learn Microsoft Learn offers a wide range of self-paced courses that can help you prepare for the exam.
• Take the free Practice Assessment to validate your understanding of Microsoft Learning. Aim for a pass mark of 80 as an indicator you are ready to sit the exam.
• Test yourself against past exam papers so that you can get a feel for the style and format the exam questions will be asked. You can access a wide range of past exam questions for free on ExamTopics for both the AI-900 and AI-102 exams.

Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals:

• Have a strong understanding of Azure AI Services. To ace the exam, it’s crucial to have a comprehensive understanding of the various AI services and capabilities that Azure offers. You should be able to demonstrate your knowledge of the different use cases for Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Document Intelligence and Knowledge Mining, and Generative AI.
• Familiarise yourself with the different types of machine learning it’s vital to understand the different types of machine learning and the metrics that can be used to evaluate a machine learning model.
• Have a good understanding of the Azure Responsible Principles of AI. You should familiarise yourself with Azure’s 6 principles of responsible AI: Reliability and safety, Privacy and security, Inclusiveness, Transparency, and Accountability, and understand how these principles apply to AI use cases.

AI Engineer Associate:

• Be familiar with Python or C#. You should be comfortable with the coding syntax used for building Azure AI solutions. You can choose to sit the exam questions in either Python or C# and should have some experience developing solutions that use one of these languages.
• Ability to use Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs and SDKs You should have the ability to use Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs and SDKs to call AI solutions on Azure.
• The AI-102 exam is open book You will be allowed to access Microsoft documentation during the AI-102 exam. Ensure you are comfortable and familiar with navigating around the Microsoft website so you can quickly access the information you need.

Hopefully, you found this blog post helpful and are considering working towards a Microsoft Azure certification. If you are interested in reading more tricks and tips for passing these certifications, check out the blog blog ‘Mastering Azure AI Certifications’ by my Version 1 colleague Liam Williamson’s who talks about his own experience sitting the exams.

Good luck!

About the Author:
Sarah King is a Data Visualisation Consultant at Version 1.