Flink SQL on Confluent Cloud Invokes ML Model & AI Inference

What this post added

This post details the integration of Flink AI Model Inference within Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink. It explains how Flink SQL can now invoke machine learning models, including generative AI large language models (LLMs) and custom ML/deep learning models, directly from SQL statements. The post outlines the process of creating Flink models as resources, invoking them using the `ML_PREDICT` function, and integrating with various cloud AI services (OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex AI). A practical example demonstrates using Flink AI for sentiment analysis of product reviews, covering Kafka topic creation, data ingestion, Flink SQL model definition, invocation, and storing results in a downstream table. The feature is currently in Early Access (EA).