2023 Archive for "What's New in Azure AI Search"
See What's new in Azure AI Search for the most recent announcements.
| Month | Type | Announcement |
|---|---|---|
| November | Feature | Vector search, generally available. The previous restriction on customer-managed keys (CMK) is now lifted. Prefiltering and exhaustive K-nearest neighbor algorithm are also now generally available. |
| November | Feature | Semantic ranker, generally available |
| November | Feature | Integrated vectorization (preview) adds data chunking and text-to-vector conversions during indexing, and also adds text-to-vector conversions at query time. |
| November | Feature | Import and vectorize data wizard (preview) automates data chunking and vectorization. It targets the 2023-10-01-Preview REST API. |
| November | Feature | Index projections (preview) defines the shape of a secondary index, used for a one-to-many index pattern, where content from an enrichment pipeline can target multiple indexes. |
| November | API | 2023-11-01 Search REST API is stable version of the Search REST APIs for vector search and semantic ranking. See Upgrade REST APIs for migration steps to generally available features. |
| November | API | 2023-11-01 Management REST API adds APIs that enable or disable semantic ranker. |
| November | Skill | Azure OpenAI Embedding skill (preview) connects to a deployed embedding model on your Azure OpenAI resource to generate embeddings during skillset execution. |
| November | Skill | Text Split skill (preview) updated in 2023-10-01-Preview to support native data chunking. |
| November | Video | How vector search and semantic ranking improve your GPT prompts explains how hybrid retrieval gives you optimal grounding data for generating useful AI responses and enables search over both concepts and keywords. |
| November | Sample | Role-based access control in Generative AI applications explains how to use Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft Graph API to roll out granular user permissions on chunked content in your index. |
| October | Sample | "Chat with your data" solution accelerator. End-to-end RAG pattern that uses Azure AI Search as a retriever. It provides indexing, data chunking, and orchestration. |
| October | Feature | Exhaustive K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) scoring algorithm for similarity search in vector space. Available in the 2023-10-01-Preview REST API only. |
| October | Feature | Prefilters in vector search evaluate filter criteria before query execution, reducing the amount of content that needs to be searched. Available in the 2023-10-01-Preview REST API only, through a new vectorFilterMode property on the query that can be set to preFilter (default) or postFilter, depending on your requirements. |
| October | API | 2023-10-01-Preview Search REST API, breaking changes the definition for vector fields and vector queries. |
| August | Feature | Enhanced semantic ranking. Upgraded models are rolling out for semantic reranking, and availability is extended to more regions. Maximum unique token counts doubled from 128 to 256. |
| July | Sample | Vector demo (Azure SDK for JavaScript). Uses Node.js and the @azure/search-documents 12.0.0-beta.2 library to generate embeddings, create and load an index, and run several vector queries. |
| July | Sample | Vector demo (Azure SDK for .NET). Uses the Azure.Search.Documents 11.5.0-beta.3 library to generate embeddings, create and load an index, and run several vector queries. You can also try this sample from the Azure SDK team. |
| July | Sample | Vector demo (Azure SDK for Python) Uses the latest beta release of the azure.search.documents to generate embeddings, create and load an index, and run several vector queries. Visit the azure-search-vector-samples/demo-python repo for more vector search demos. |
| June | Feature | Vector search public preview. |
| June | Feature | Semantic search availability, available on the Basic tier. |
| June | API | 2023-07-01-Preview Search REST API. Support for vector search. |
| May | Feature | Azure RBAC (role-based access control, generally available). |
| May | API | 2022-09-01 Management REST API, with support for configuring search to use Azure roles. The Az.Search module of Azure PowerShell and Az search module of the Azure CLI are updated to support search service authentication options. You can also use the Terraform provider to configure authentication options (see this Terraform quickstart for details). |
| April | Sample | Multi-region deployment of Azure AI Search for business continuity and disaster recovery. Deployment scripts that fully configure a multi-regional solution for Azure AI Search, with options for synchronizing content and request redirection if an endpoint fails. |
| March | Sample | ChatGPT + Enterprise data with Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Search (GitHub). Python code and a template for combining Azure AI Search with the large language models in OpenAI. For background, see this Tech Community blog post: Revolutionize your Enterprise Data with ChatGPT. Key points: Use Azure AI Search to consolidate and index searchable content. Query the index for initial search results. Assemble prompts from those results and send to the gpt-35-turbo (preview) model in Azure OpenAI. Return a cross-document answer and provide citations and transparency in your customer-facing app so that users can assess the response. |