According to the Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900) official study guide and Microsoft Learn module “Describe features of computer vision workloads on Azure”, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a core computer vision workload that enables AI systems to detect and extract text from images or scanned documents.
In this scenario, the goal is to identify street names from street signs in photographs. Since the text is embedded within images, OCR is the correct technology to use. OCR works by analyzing the visual patterns of letters, numbers, and symbols, then converting them into machine-readable text. Azure’s Computer Vision API and Azure AI Vision Service provide OCR capabilities that can extract printed or handwritten text from pictures, documents, and even real-time camera feeds.
Let’s analyze the other options:
A. Object detection: Identifies and locates objects (like cars, people, or street signs) but not the text written on them.
C. Image classification: Classifies an entire image into categories (e.g., “street scene” or “traffic sign”) but doesn’t extract text content.
D. Facial recognition: Identifies or verifies people by analyzing facial features, unrelated to text extraction.
Therefore, identifying street names on street signs is a text extraction problem, making Optical Character Recognition (OCR) the most accurate and verified answer per Microsoft Learn content.
