According to the Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900) Official Study Guide and the Microsoft Learn module “Explore fundamental principles of machine learning,” anomaly detection is a specialized machine learning technique used to identify data points, patterns, or events that deviate significantly from normal behavior.

Anomaly detection is widely used for monitoring time-series data and detecting unexpected or rare occurrences that may indicate problems, opportunities, or fraud. For example:

Detecting fraudulent transactions in banking systems.

Identifying equipment malfunctions in industrial IoT applications.

Monitoring network intrusions in cybersecurity.

Detecting unexpected spikes or drops in web traffic or sales.

In Azure, this workload is supported by the Azure AI Anomaly Detector service, which uses statistical and machine learning algorithms to learn from historical data and establish a baseline of normal behavior. When the system detects data points that fall outside expected patterns, it flags them as anomalies.

Let’s evaluate the incorrect options:

A. A machine learning technique that understands written and spoken language → This describes Natural Language Processing (NLP), not anomaly detection.

B. A machine learning technique that classifies objects based on user-supplied images → This refers to image classification, typically using computer vision.

D. A machine learning technique that classifies images based on their contents → Also describes computer vision, not anomaly detection.

Therefore, the correct answer is C, since anomaly detection specifically refers to analyzing data over time and identifying unusual or abnormal patterns that differ from the expected trend.

According to the Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900) Official Study Guide and the Microsoft Learn module “Explore computer vision in Microsoft Azure,” Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a computer vision capability that detects and extracts printed or handwritten text from images or scanned documents and converts it into machine-readable digital text.

In this scenario, a historian wants to digitize newspaper articles — which means converting physical or scanned images of printed text into digital text for easier searching, archiving, and analysis. This is exactly the function of OCR. By using OCR, the historian can take photos or scans of old newspapers and extract the words into editable digital documents, preserving valuable historical information.

OCR is a key feature of the Azure Computer Vision service, which provides capabilities such as:

Extracting text from images or PDFs.

Reading both printed and handwritten text in multiple languages.

Converting physical documents into searchable digital files.

Let’s examine the incorrect options:

Facial analysis: Detects facial features, age, gender, and emotions — unrelated to text extraction.

Image classification: Identifies what an image contains (e.g., “dog,” “car,” or “building”) but doesn’t extract text.

Object detection: Identifies and locates objects within an image using bounding boxes, not suitable for text recognition.

Therefore, to digitize newspaper articles and convert printed words into editable digital text, the correct technology to use is Optical Character Recognition (OCR), provided by the Azure Computer Vision API.

✅ Final Answer: optical character recognition (OCR)

rrect answer is C. Predicting the sale price of a house based on historical data, the size of the house, and the number of bedrooms.

In machine learning, regression is a supervised learning technique used to predict continuous numeric values. Microsoft’s AI-900 study guide defines regression models as those that estimate relationships between variables—predicting a continuous outcome variable from one or more input features.

In this case, the house sale price is a continuous numeric value, and inputs such as size, location, and number of bedrooms are the features. Common regression algorithms include linear regression, decision tree regression, and boosted regression.

Other options represent different ML workloads:

A involves segmentation by categories (classification or clustering).

B represents clustering, grouping similar items without predefined labels.

D represents computer vision, counting animals in images rather than predicting a numeric value.

Hence, the verified answer is C. Regression.