This post is a part of the AI-901: Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals Exam Prep Hub.
This topic falls under these sections:
Identify AI concepts and capabilities (40–45%)
--> Identify AI workloads
--> Describe common Text Analysis techniques, including Keyword Extraction, Entity Detection, Sentiment Analysis, and Summarization
Note that there are 10 practice questions (with answers and explanations) for each section to help you solidify your knowledge of the material. Also, there are 2 practice tests with 60 questions each available on the hub below the exam topics section.
Text analysis is one of the most common and important AI workloads covered in the AI-901 certification exam. Microsoft expects candidates to understand how AI systems analyze and interpret written language using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques.
This topic falls under the “Identify AI workloads” section of the AI-901 exam objectives.
What Is Text Analysis?
Text analysis is an AI workload that uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze, interpret, and extract meaning from written text.
Text analysis helps organizations process large amounts of unstructured textual data automatically.
Common Sources of Text Data
Organizations analyze text from many sources, including:
- Emails
- Customer reviews
- Social media posts
- Chat messages
- Support tickets
- Surveys
- Documents
- Articles
What Is Natural Language Processing (NLP)?
Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a branch of AI focused on helping computers understand and work with human language.
NLP combines:
- Machine learning
- Linguistics
- Statistical analysis
- Deep learning
NLP enables systems to interpret meaning, emotion, intent, and context within text.
Common Text Analysis Techniques
For the AI-901 exam, important text analysis techniques include:
- Keyword extraction
- Entity detection
- Sentiment analysis
- Summarization
Additional related techniques include:
- Language detection
- Translation
- Text classification
Keyword Extraction
Keyword extraction identifies the most important words or phrases within text.
The goal is to determine the primary topics or themes.
How Keyword Extraction Works
AI systems analyze text and identify terms that appear most significant based on:
- Frequency
- Relevance
- Context
- Relationships to other words
Keyword Extraction Examples
Input Text
“The customer was very satisfied with the fast delivery and excellent product quality.”
Extracted Keywords
- customer
- fast delivery
- product quality
Common Use Cases for Keyword Extraction
Search Optimization
Improve document indexing and search engines.
Document Categorization
Identify major document topics automatically.
Customer Feedback Analysis
Detect common issues or themes.
Content Tagging
Automatically assign tags to articles or documents.
Entity Detection
Entity detection identifies important entities mentioned within text.
This technique is often called Named Entity Recognition (NER).
Common Entity Types
AI systems may identify:
- People
- Organizations
- Locations
- Dates
- Phone numbers
- Email addresses
- Products
- Currency amounts
Entity Detection Example
Input Text
“Microsoft announced a conference in Seattle on June 15.”
Detected Entities
- Microsoft → Organization
- Seattle → Location
- June 15 → Date
Common Use Cases for Entity Detection
Document Processing
Extract important business information from contracts or forms.
Compliance Monitoring
Identify sensitive information.
Customer Relationship Management
Track companies, customers, or products mentioned in communications.
Search and Analytics
Improve document filtering and organization.
Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis identifies emotional tone or opinion within text.
It determines whether text expresses:
- Positive sentiment
- Negative sentiment
- Neutral sentiment
How Sentiment Analysis Works
AI models analyze words, phrases, and context to estimate emotional tone.
Example Positive Words
- Excellent
- Great
- Amazing
Example Negative Words
- Poor
- Terrible
- Frustrating
Context is important because words can have different meanings depending on usage.
Sentiment Analysis Example
Input Text
“The product quality was excellent, but shipping was slow.”
Possible Sentiment Results
- Product quality → Positive
- Shipping experience → Negative
Some systems provide:
- Overall sentiment
- Sentence-level sentiment
- Confidence scores
Common Use Cases for Sentiment Analysis
Customer Feedback Monitoring
Analyze reviews and surveys.
Brand Monitoring
Track public opinion on social media.
Customer Service Improvement
Identify dissatisfied customers.
Market Research
Understand consumer opinions.
Summarization
Summarization creates shorter versions of longer text while preserving key information.
AI summarization helps users quickly understand large amounts of information.
Types of Summarization
Extractive Summarization
Extractive summarization selects important sentences directly from the original text.
Abstractive Summarization
Abstractive summarization generates new sentences that summarize the meaning of the text.
This approach is more similar to how humans summarize information.
Summarization Example
Original Text
“The company reported increased sales this quarter due to strong online demand and improved supply chain performance.”
Summary
“The company experienced increased sales driven by online demand.”
Common Use Cases for Summarization
Meeting Summaries
Condense meeting transcripts.
News Summaries
Provide quick article overviews.
Customer Support
Summarize long support conversations.
Research Assistance
Condense lengthy documents or reports.
Language Detection
Language detection identifies the language used in text.
Example
An AI system determines whether text is:
- English
- Spanish
- French
- German
Common Use Cases
- Multilingual applications
- Translation routing
- International customer support
Text Classification
Text classification assigns categories or labels to text.
Examples
- Spam detection
- Topic categorization
- Support ticket routing
Real-World Examples
Scenario 1: Customer Review Analysis
Goal
Understand customer opinions.
Techniques Used
- Sentiment analysis
- Keyword extraction
Scenario 2: Legal Contract Processing
Goal
Identify important contract information.
Techniques Used
- Entity detection
- Summarization
Scenario 3: News Aggregation Platform
Goal
Provide short summaries of articles.
Techniques Used
- Summarization
- Keyword extraction
Scenario 4: Customer Support Ticket System
Goal
Automatically categorize and prioritize tickets.
Techniques Used
- Text classification
- Sentiment analysis
Azure AI Language Services
Azure AI Language Services provide prebuilt NLP capabilities such as:
- Sentiment analysis
- Entity recognition
- Summarization
- Language detection
- Key phrase extraction
These services help developers add text analysis features without building models from scratch.
Structured vs. Unstructured Text Data
Text analysis commonly processes unstructured data.
| Structured Data | Unstructured Data |
|---|---|
| Databases | Emails |
| Tables | Documents |
| Spreadsheets | Social media posts |
| Defined fields | Reviews |
AI systems help convert unstructured text into usable structured information.
Responsible AI Considerations
Organizations using text analysis should consider:
- Privacy
- Bias
- Transparency
- Security
- Accuracy
- Responsible handling of personal data
Text analysis systems may process sensitive information and should be designed carefully.
Important AI-901 Exam Tips
For the exam, remember these key points:
- Keyword extraction identifies important terms or phrases.
- Entity detection identifies items such as people, places, organizations, and dates.
- Sentiment analysis determines emotional tone.
- Summarization creates shorter versions of text.
- NLP enables computers to process human language.
- OCR extracts text from images but is different from text analysis.
- Summarization may be extractive or abstractive.
- Text classification assigns categories to text.
Quick Knowledge Check
Question 1
Which text analysis technique identifies emotional tone?
Answer
Sentiment analysis.
Question 2
What does Named Entity Recognition (NER) identify?
Answer
Entities such as people, organizations, locations, and dates.
Question 3
What is the purpose of keyword extraction?
Answer
To identify important words or phrases in text.
Question 4
What does summarization do?
Answer
Creates shorter versions of longer text while preserving key information.
Practice Exam Questions
Question 1
Which text analysis technique identifies the emotional tone of written text?
A. OCR
B. Sentiment analysis
C. Object detection
D. Regression
Correct Answer
B. Sentiment analysis
Explanation
Sentiment analysis determines whether text expresses positive, negative, or neutral emotions or opinions.
Why the Other Answers Are Incorrect
A. OCR
OCR extracts text from images or scanned documents.
C. Object detection
Object detection identifies objects within images.
D. Regression
Regression predicts numeric values.
Question 2
A company wants to automatically identify important phrases from customer feedback forms.
Which text analysis technique is MOST appropriate?
A. Speech synthesis
B. Keyword extraction
C. Facial recognition
D. Image classification
Correct Answer
B. Keyword extraction
Explanation
Keyword extraction identifies the most important words or phrases within text.
Why the Other Answers Are Incorrect
A. Speech synthesis
Speech synthesis converts text into spoken audio.
C. Facial recognition
Facial recognition analyzes faces in images.
D. Image classification
Image classification categorizes images.
Question 3
What is the PRIMARY purpose of Named Entity Recognition (NER)?
A. Predicting future sales
B. Identifying important entities such as people, organizations, and locations in text
C. Translating languages automatically
D. Detecting objects in images
Correct Answer
B. Identifying important entities such as people, organizations, and locations in text
Explanation
NER extracts structured information from text by identifying entities like names, places, dates, and organizations.
Why the Other Answers Are Incorrect
A. Predicting future sales
This is typically a regression task.
C. Translating languages automatically
Translation is a separate NLP capability.
D. Detecting objects in images
This is a computer vision task.
Question 4
Which AI capability creates a shorter version of a document while preserving key information?
A. OCR
B. Summarization
C. Clustering
D. Object detection
Correct Answer
B. Summarization
Explanation
Summarization condenses long text into shorter, meaningful summaries.
Why the Other Answers Are Incorrect
A. OCR
OCR extracts text from images.
C. Clustering
Clustering groups similar data.
D. Object detection
Object detection identifies items within images.
Question 5
A business analyzes product reviews to determine whether customers are satisfied or dissatisfied.
Which AI technique is being used?
A. Sentiment analysis
B. Recommendation system
C. OCR
D. Regression
Correct Answer
A. Sentiment analysis
Explanation
Sentiment analysis evaluates emotional tone and opinions expressed in text.
Why the Other Answers Are Incorrect
B. Recommendation system
Recommendation systems suggest products or content.
C. OCR
OCR extracts text from images.
D. Regression
Regression predicts numeric outcomes.
Question 6
Which statement BEST describes keyword extraction?
A. It converts speech into text
B. It identifies important words or phrases in text
C. It translates text between languages
D. It predicts future trends
Correct Answer
B. It identifies important words or phrases in text
Explanation
Keyword extraction helps determine the main topics or themes within text documents.
Why the Other Answers Are Incorrect
A. It converts speech into text
This is speech recognition.
C. It translates text between languages
This is machine translation.
D. It predicts future trends
This is unrelated to keyword extraction.
Question 7
Which text analysis technique would MOST likely identify “Microsoft” as an organization and “Seattle” as a location?
A. Entity detection
B. Sentiment analysis
C. Speech recognition
D. Image segmentation
Correct Answer
A. Entity detection
Explanation
Entity detection (NER) identifies named entities such as organizations, locations, dates, and people within text.
Why the Other Answers Are Incorrect
B. Sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis evaluates emotional tone.
C. Speech recognition
Speech recognition processes audio.
D. Image segmentation
Image segmentation is a computer vision task.
Question 8
What is the difference between extractive and abstractive summarization?
A. Extractive summarization uses images, while abstractive summarization uses text
B. Extractive summarization selects sentences from the original text, while abstractive summarization generates new summary wording
C. Extractive summarization only works with speech
D. There is no difference
Correct Answer
B. Extractive summarization selects sentences from the original text, while abstractive summarization generates new summary wording
Explanation
Extractive summarization pulls existing sentences directly from text, while abstractive summarization creates newly generated summaries.
Why the Other Answers Are Incorrect
A. Extractive summarization uses images, while abstractive summarization uses text
Both methods work with text.
C. Extractive summarization only works with speech
Summarization is generally text-based.
D. There is no difference
The two methods are different approaches.
Question 9
Which AI workload category includes keyword extraction, sentiment analysis, and summarization?
A. Computer vision
B. Text analysis
C. Robotics
D. Regression analysis
Correct Answer
B. Text analysis
Explanation
These techniques are part of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and text analysis workloads.
Why the Other Answers Are Incorrect
A. Computer vision
Computer vision focuses on images and video.
C. Robotics
Robotics involves physical machines and automation.
D. Regression analysis
Regression predicts numeric values.
Question 10
A company wants to process thousands of support tickets and automatically identify the most common customer complaints.
Which AI technique would be MOST useful?
A. Object detection
B. Keyword extraction
C. Facial recognition
D. Speech synthesis
Correct Answer
B. Keyword extraction
Explanation
Keyword extraction identifies recurring important phrases and themes within large collections of text.
Why the Other Answers Are Incorrect
A. Object detection
Object detection analyzes images.
C. Facial recognition
Facial recognition identifies people in images or video.
D. Speech synthesis
Speech synthesis converts text into audio.
Final Thoughts
Text analysis is a foundational AI workload and an important topic for the AI-901 certification exam. Microsoft expects candidates to understand common NLP techniques and recognize real-world scenarios where text analysis provides value.
These capabilities help organizations transform large volumes of unstructured text into actionable insights using Azure AI technologies.
Go to the AI-901 Exam Prep Hub main page
