A 12 Lesson course teaching everything you need to know to start building Generative AI applications

Generative AI for Beginners - A Course

Learn the fundamentals of building Generative AI applications with our 12-lesson comprehensive course by Microsoft Cloud Advocates. Each lesson covers a key aspect of Generative AI principles and application development. Throughout this course, you will be building your own Generative AI startup so you can get an understanding of what it takes to launch your ideas.

🌟 Special thanks

To our Microsoft Student Ambassadors and community authors, reviewers, and content contributors including:

John Aziz - For creating all of the GitHub Actions and workflows

🌱 Getting Started

To get started, fork this entire repo to your own GitHub account to be able to change any code and complete the challenges. You can also star (🌟) this repo to find it easier later.

Below are the links to each lesson. Feel free to explore and start at any lesson that interests you the most!

Head to the Course Setup Page to find the setup guide that works best for you.

🗣️ Meet Other Learners, Get Support

One of the best ways to learn is learning with others! Join our official AI Discord server to meet and network with other learners taking this course and get support. Who knows? You might find your next co-founder there!

🧠 Want to learn more?

After completing this course, check out our Generative AI Learning collection to continue leveling up your Generative AI knowledge!

🚀 Are you a startup or got an idea you want to launch?

Sign up for Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub to receive free OpenAI credits and up to $150k towards Azure credits to access OpenAI models through Azure OpenAI Services.

🙏 Want to help?

Here are ways you can contribute to this course:

• Find spelling errors or code errors, Raise an issue or Create a pull request
• Send us your ideas, maybe your ideas for new lessons or exercises, and let us know how we can improve.

📂 Each lesson includes:

• a short video introduction to the topic
• a written lesson located in the README
• a Jupyter Notebook with code examples (for project-based lessons)
• a challenge or assignment to apply your learning
• links to extra resources to continue your learning

🗃️ Lessons

	Lesson Link	Concepts Taught	Learning Goal
00	Course Introduction - How to Take This Course	Tech setup and course structure	Setting you up for success while learning in this course
01	Introduction to Generative AI and LLMs	Concept: Generative AI and the current technology landscape	Understanding what Generative AI is and how Large Language Models (LLMs) work.
02	Exploring and comparing different LLMs	Concept: Testing, iterating, and comparing different Large Language Models	Select the right model for your use case
03	Using Generative AI Responsibly	Concept: Understanding the limitations of foundation models and the risks behind AI	Learn how to build Generative AI Applications responsibly
04	Understanding Prompt Engineering Fundamentals	Code/Concept: Hands-on application of Prompt Engineering Best Practices	Understand prompt structure & usage
05	Creating Advanced Prompts	Code/Concept: Extend your knowledge of prompt engineering by applying different techniques to your prompts	Apply prompt engineering techniques that improve the outcome of your prompts.
06	Building Text Generation Applications	Code: Build a text generation app using Azure OpenAI	Understand how to efficiently use tokens and temperature to vary the model's output
07	Building Chat Applications	Code: Techniques for efficiently building and integrating chat applications.	Identify key metrics and considerations to effectively monitor and maintain the quality of AI-powered chat applications
08	Building Search Apps Vector Databases	Code: Semantic vs Keyword search. Learn about text embeddings and how they apply to search	Create an application that uses Embeddings to search for data.
09	Building Image Generation Applications	Code: Image generation and why it's useful in building applications	Build an image generation application
10	Building Low Code AI Applications	Low Code: Introduction to Generative AI in Power Platform	Build a Student Assignment Tracker App for our education startup with Low Code
11	Integrating External Applications with Function Calling	Code: What is function calling and its use cases for applications	Setup a function call to retrieve data from an external API
12	Designing UX for AI Applications	Concept: Designing AI Applications for Trust and Transparency	Apply UX design principles when developing Generative AI Applications
xx	Continue Your Learning	Links to continue your learning from each lesson!	Mastering your Generative AI skills

🎒 Other Courses

Our team produces other courses! Check out:

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• Data Science for Beginners
• AI for Beginners
• Web Dev for Beginners
• IoT for Beginners
• XR Development for Beginners
• Mastering GitHub Copilot for AI Paired Programming