You send an image to a Computer Vision API and receive back the annotated image...

Object detection is similar to tagging, but the API returns the bounding box coordinates (in pixels) for each object found. For example, if an image contains a dog, cat and person, the Detect operation will list those objects together with their coordinates in the image. You can use this functionality to process the relationships between the objects in an image. It also lets you determine whether there are multiple instances of the same tag in an image.

The Detect API applies tags based on the objects or living things identified in the image. There is currently no formal relationship between the tagging taxonomy and the object detection taxonomy. At a conceptual level, the Detect API only finds objects and living things, while the Tag API can also include contextual terms like "indoor", which can't be localized with bounding boxes.