Azure AI-901 glossary of AI fundamentals, business use cases, and governance terms.
Use this glossary when Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-901) terms start to blur together. The goal is practical recognition, not encyclopedia coverage.
| Term | Exam meaning |
|---|---|
| Responsible AI | A set of principles and practices for safe, fair, transparent, accountable AI use. |
| Model deployment | Making a model available through an endpoint or managed platform surface. |
| System prompt | Instruction that defines assistant behavior, boundaries, tone, and constraints. |
| Multimodal model | A model that can process more than one modality, such as text plus image, audio, or video. |
| Content Understanding | A service pattern for extracting structured information from documents and media. |
| SDK | Software development kit used by code to call cloud services and model endpoints. |
| Pair | How to separate them |
|---|---|
| AI concepts and responsibility vs Foundry basics | Ask which layer the scenario is testing, then match the answer to that layer only. |
| Control vs evidence | A control changes behavior; evidence proves behavior or supports investigation. |
| Managed service vs custom build | Managed services win for lower operational effort unless the requirement needs unsupported customization. |
| Prevention vs detection | Prevention blocks or reduces a bad event; detection finds or reports that it happened. |
Do not memorize terms in isolation. For each term, write one scenario where it is the best answer, one scenario where it is a distractor, and one signal that proves it worked.