Visual Studio Tools for AI

Visual Studio Tools for AI is an extension to build, test, and deploy Deep Learning / AI solutions. It seamlessly integrates with Cloud AI services such as Azure Machine Learning for robust experimentation capabilities, including but not limited to submitting data preparation and model training jobs transparently to different compute targets. Additionally, it provides support for custom metrics and run history tracking, enabling data science reproducibility and auditing. Enterprise ready collaboration, allow to securely work on project with other people.

Get started with deep learning using Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (CNTK), Google TensorFlow, PyTorch, Apache MXNet or other frameworks today.

Please visit our homepage for details on installation and usage.

NOTE: This extension is designed to work with Visual Studio 2015. You can download a version of this extension compatible with Visual Studio 2017 here.

What's new in 0.5.0.755748 (2018-09-02)

• Fix an issue that prevents users from importing certain ONNX model.

What's new in 0.5.0.752675 (2018-08-30)

• Fix an issue that the most recent version of Visual Studio cannot install the extension.

What's new in 0.5.0.747136 (2018-08-25)

• When first starting Tools for AI, an installation page is shown for guiding local AI development environment setup. Users can launch a one-click installer from this page to install required software packages into the default Python environment.
• We design a new start page to help users build first AI application / train first AI Model within 3 steps. The start page also contains useful AI examples and development resources.
• Azure Cognitive Services is organized by subscription in the Server Explorer. When creating a cognitive service, users can specify existing resource group or create a new one.
• Docker image list is updated for job submission to remote machines. And a new all-in-one docker image including all popular AI / DL frameworks is provided.
• Besides sending feedback in GitHub, now user can send feedback via Email too. Moreover, a more proactive feedback channel is built - will prompt user to give feedback when some conditions met.
• Azure Batch AI support is temporarily removed, will get the support of Batch AI back soon.
• Telemetry and stability improvements.

Learn more about previous releases.

Develop, debug and deploy deep learning models and AI solutions

Use the productivity features of Visual Studio to accelerate AI innovation today. Use built-in code editor features like syntax highlighting, IntelliSense and text auto formatting. You can interactively test your deep learning application in your local environment using step-through debugging on local variables and models.

Learn more about creating deep learning projects in Visual Studio

Get started quickly with the Start Page

Tools for AI Start Page is built to accelerate your start in AI world with

• Easy instructions to guide you to build your first AI application within 3 steps;
• AI inferencing/training samples and AI related learning materials for you to quickly learn and build your own AI solutions.

Learn more about Start Page

Moreover, Visual Studio Tools for AI is integrated with Azure Machine Learning to make it easy to browse through a gallery of sample experiments using CNTK, TensorFlow, MMLSpark and more.

Learn more about creating projects from the sample gallery

Scale out deep learning model training and/or inferencing to the cloud

This extension makes it easy to train models on your local computer or you can submit jobs to the cloud by using our integration with Azure Machine Learning. You can submit jobs to different compute targets like Spark clusters, Azure GPU virtual machines and more

Learn more about training models in the cloud

Infuse AI into your apps with Microsoft Cognitive Services

Microsoft Cognitive Services are a set of APIs, SDKs and services available to developers to make your applications more intelligent, engaging and discoverable, with just a few lines of code. Visual Studio Tools for AI now easily enables you to discover, create and customize your cognitive services from within Visual Studio.

Learn more about working with Microsoft Cognitive Services

Build intelligent apps using pre-trained AI models

Building intelligent applications in Visual Studio is as easy as adding your pre-trained model to your app, just like any other library or resource. Visual Studio Tools for AI includes the Microsoft.ML.Scoring library that offers simplified consistent APIs across TensorFlow and ONNX models.

Moreover, Visual Studio Tools for AI generates a C# stub class to simplify interaction with models in your app. These Model Inference Library projects can be further deployed as NuGet packages for convenient distribution.

Learn more about using pre-trained AI models

Interoperation between different AI frameworks through model file conversion

There have been many AI frameworks for users to build their own models. However, they differ with each other greatly on the implementation details. This will inevitably result in that models produced by one framework cannot be reused for subsequent training or inference in another framework, which brings inconvenience and increases cost to users on framework choice. Model file conversion is a feasible trial towards such challenge.

Visual Studio Tools for AI now easily enables you to convert Core ML, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, XGBoost and LIBSVM models to ONNX format by leveraging existing model converters.

Learn more about model file conversion

Supported Operating Systems

Currently this extension supports 64-bit Windows operating systems. Windows 10 is recommended for the best compatibility.

[!NOTE]

32-bit Windows are not supported.

Supported Visual Studio

Visual Studio Tools for AI works with both Visual Studio 2017 and 2015. Community, Professional and Enterprise editions are supported.

This extension is hosted on Visual Studio Marketplace in two VS 2017, and VS 2015 packages.