AI Fundamentals

Name: AI Fundamentals
Rating: 4.6 (625 reviews)

Course 1/7 of Google AI Professional Certificate

Learn the fundamentals of working with AI and how to prompt responsibly so you can leverage it effectively at work.

Created byGoogle

Last updated 8/2026

English

Bulgarian [Auto],Czech [Auto],

Earn a certificate from Google

After completion of all courses in the Google AI Professional Certificate path, earn a professional certificate that you can share on social media, LinkedIn, resume, or CV.

What you'll learn

Understand fundamental generative AI concepts and build a foundation for professional AI use.
Construct effective prompts using a structured framework to generate high-quality, relevant outputs for workplace tasks.
Evaluate AI-generated outputs for accuracy and bias and apply critical thinking to ensure responsible and ethical AI use.
Analyze your professional workflow to identify high-impact opportunities to collaborate with AI.

Course content

6 sections • 28 lectures • 1h 13m total length

AI fundamentals3:02
Explore AI fundamentals and apply AI to your work using Google's Gemini app, NotebookLM, and AI Studio. Build clear visuals, roadmaps, and custom apps through natural-language guidance.
Adopt a collaborative mindset with AI1:50
Adopt a collaborative mindset with AI to co-create forecasts, test assumptions, and explore revenue scenarios. Use your context and judgment to guide AI in solving business problems.
Three ways to collaborate with AI1:40
Maya, what advice do you have for people getting started with AI?1:00
Maya advises starting with AI tools and training your mind to use AI to overcome tough problems, easing tasks and getting the ball rolling when motivation flags.

Get the most out of labs2:12
Complete labs with Google AI Pro at no cost3:10
Learn: Brainstorm ideas with Gemini2:26
Learn to use Gemini as a creative partner to brainstorm presentation structures, pull web-referenced statistics, draft intro paragraphs in casual and professional tones, and turn notes into emails and documents.
Build with AI: Generate new ideas1:39
Carol, how has AI been blowing your mind recently?0:42

Learn foundational AI concepts5:20
Explore how AI works, from models and training data to large language models and generative AI, and see how multimodal capabilities and AI agents transform everyday productivity.
Fundamentals of machine learning2:16
Understand AI limitations3:25
Leverage AI features and capabilities for work4:28
Learn to prompt the Gemini AI app with clear inputs to produce useful outputs for summaries, drafting, and insights at work. Explore how model choice and temperature settings customize results.

Learn how to prompt AI to get helpful results6:03
Learn to prompt AI with a clear framework: set persona, task, format, and context using Gemini; practice iteration and multimodal prompts for better, collaborative AI results.
Prepare: Prompting tips and tricks2:47
Learn: Prompting4:07
Explore a prompting framework using Gemini to design and refine prompts through meta prompting, share detailed context, adopt a career coach persona, and generate actionable learning actions and formatted outputs.
Build with AI: Apply the prompting framework in Gemini2:02
Mahi, what is your go to prompting trick?0:44
Learn a practical prompting trick: provide context upfront and end with a request for follow-up questions, enabling proactive clarification to deliver a satisfying end-to-end plan.

Build with AI: Prompt chaining in Gemini1:35
Mahi, what's a hack for giving Gemini context in a new chat?1:03
Learn strategies to preserve Gemini context in long chats by restarting threads, asking for a summary, and re-uploading attachments with a concise recap of what you’ve tried and what’s next.
Prepare: Generate visuals with AI1:50
Prepare: Prompt chaining strategies3:17
Build with AI: Custom images with Gemini3:56

Responsible AI in practice4:55
Apply responsible ai in practice by using the act framework—ask, check, tell—while staying in the human-in-the-loop and guarding sensitive data. Understand ai limitations, verify outputs for accuracy and bias.
Mahi, what should you do if you get a bad response from Gemini?0:46
Provide constructive feedback by thumbs down and using the 'what went wrong' box to describe expectations, helping us improve the Gemini model in future updates.
Responsible AI best practices3:35
Learn about AI agents3:14
Course challenge
Claim your course completion badge0:39

Requirements

None.

Description

Ready to move beyond the buzz and see real results with AI? This course covers the fundamentals of working with AI, like understanding its strengths and limitations so you can leverage it effectively at work. You’ll learn how to give AI clear and specific instructions, called prompts, and how to use AI responsibly by maintaining a “human-in-the-loop” approach.

By the end of this course, you will:

Adopt a new way of working with AI, moving beyond a simple task completer to a professional collaborator.
Apply prompting techniques to brainstorm new ideas and build a library of reusable prompts for repeatable daily tasks.
Practice prompt chaining to solve complex, multi-step problems.
Generate custom images by learning how to effectively communicate your creative vision.
Use responsible judgement to apply AI confidently.

This course is a part of the Google AI Professional Certificate, a program that takes you beyond foundational understanding to becoming an AI-fluent professional. With this certificate, you’ll gain hands-on experience building the AI skills that employers are looking for. Designed by experts at Google, you’ll practice using AI in real workplace tasks. You’ll learn how to use AI to sharpen your strategy, boost your creativity, and streamline the repetitive parts of your day, and you’ll build a portfolio of 20+ AI projects to show off your new skills. And, to help you do your best work, you’ll gain access to Google AI Pro at no cost, giving you experience with Google’s most helpful tools.