Why is Face service not provided by Computer Vision resource?

Question

I have a Computer Vision resource, and according to the documentation, Computer Vision provided four services: OCR, Image Analysis, Face, and Spatial Analysis.

However, when I tried the Face service quickstart, I got an 'Unauthorized' error, and after squinting at its Prequisites part, I learned that it required Face resource despite it being documented in Computer Vision documentation

For comparison, I also checked on OCR, Image Analysis, and Spatial Analysis services' quickstarts, and all of thes mentioned Computer Vision resource as prerequisite. So, why is Face service different? Why is it included in Computer Vision documentation to begin with when it's not provided by Computer Vision resource?

Am I missing something? Can I use Face service with Computer Vision resource? Thank you.

Answer 1

@Jeremy Face service or Face API is a separate service or API that could be created from Azure portal before MS decided to restrict access to the face API and other sensitive AI services to support the responsible AI principles to avoid any misuse. The addition of face api to the computer vision documentation is inline with the changes in vision pillar of cognitive services where the vision studio will offer all vision related APIs under one portal. The current documentation still recommends using a separate face resource since it requires special access which is submitted through a form.

Computer vision Celebrity Recognition API also requires special access since it comes under limited access feature of computer vision.

To summarize, due to the limited access features in both the services face API is still a separate resource since almost all of the features of the API as sensitive in nature whereas computer vision has few features which need special access. This ensures that users who want to use OCR, Image analysis and spatial analysis features get access to the API without any special access.

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