Generative AI for beginners: how to start learning

What is generative AI?

Generative AI creates new content such as text, images or code. Tools like chat assistants are powered by large language models, or LLMs, which learn patterns from huge amounts of text and then predict useful responses.

Step 1: Use the tools

Start by using AI assistants for real tasks: summarising, explaining, drafting and brainstorming. Notice where they help and where they get things wrong.

Step 2: Learn prompt engineering

• Be specific about what you want.
• Give context, such as who the answer is for.
• Show an example of the format you want.
• Ask for the answer in steps, or in a table, when that helps.
• Refine the prompt instead of accepting a weak first answer.

Step 3: Understand the limits

AI can sound confident and still be wrong. Always check facts, numbers and code before you rely on them, and be careful with private or sensitive information.

Step 4: Learn to use LLM APIs

An API lets your own app send a request to an AI model and use the answer. A little programming goes a long way here, and it is how you add AI features to websites and tools.

Step 5: RAG, chatbots over your own documents

RAG lets an assistant look up information from your own documents before it answers, so it can respond using your content instead of only its general knowledge.

Step 6: Agents

Agentic AI goes a step further: an assistant that can use tools, such as searching, reading files or calling other software, to complete a task.

Step 7: Build small projects

• A chatbot that answers questions about a document.
• A tool that summarises long text.
• A simple assistant for a small business task.

How we teach it

Our live online AI & ML courses run for 1, 2 or 3 months. They cover AI tools, prompt engineering, LLM APIs, RAG, agentic AI and, in the longest course, MLOps, with hands-on practice and AI-integrated projects.