Foundations of Generative AI
About the Course
Generative Artificial Intelligence has moved from research laboratories into everyday life within a few years. Chat assistants draft emails and explain difficult ideas, image tools create illustrations in seconds, voice and music engines produce narration and songs, and office software now includes built-in copilots that write formulas, design slides and summarise inboxes. This course gives you a complete, practical and responsible foundation for understanding and using these technologies, whatever your profession or background. No programming knowledge is required.
The course follows a deliberate path. It begins with the meaning and significance of AI, the history that led to the generative era and the impact of AI on healthcare, education, business and the creative arts, together with an overview of popular tools. It then teaches prompt engineering, the single most valuable skill for working with generative systems, covering principles, techniques and methods to control output. The next sections apply AI to everyday tasks such as conversational assistants, grammar and paraphrasing tools, document question answering and summarisation, and to creative production through text-to-image, text-to-video, voice and music generation and image-to-image transformation. You will then learn how AI improves office productivity in spreadsheets, presentations, email and data analysis, and finish with multimodal AI, in which models work across text, images, audio and video, including visual question answering and image captioning.
Every lesson is rich with tables, facts, real-life examples, case studies, checklists and practice activities. Each section ends with a ten-question quiz to confirm your understanding. Throughout, the course emphasises verification, privacy, fairness, copyright and human accountability so that you use AI confidently and ethically.
Course Structure
| Section | Title | Lessons |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Foundations of Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI | Definition and significance; evolution; impact across domains; popular tools; quiz |
| 2 | Prompt Engineering | Definition and importance; principles; techniques; controlling output; quiz |
| 3 | AI Tools for Everyday Applications | LLMs and assistants; grammar and paraphrasing; document question answering; summarisation; quiz |
| 4 | AI Tools for Creative Content | Text-to-image; text-to-video; voice and music; image-to-image; quiz |
| 5 | AI-Enhanced Office Productivity | Excel; PowerPoint; email management; data analysis; quiz |
| 6 | Multimodal AI | Definition and significance; integration of modalities; functionality; visual question answering and captioning; quiz |
Who Can Enroll
- Students and fresh graduates from any discipline who want an AI-ready skill set for studies and careers.
- Working professionals in management, marketing, finance, human resources, operations, healthcare, education, law and public service who want to save time and improve quality of work.
- Teachers, trainers and academic staff who wish to create better learning material and understand AI in the classroom.
- Entrepreneurs, freelancers and small-business owners who want affordable ways to write, design, analyse and communicate.
- Content creators, designers, writers and media professionals exploring AI-assisted creative workflows.
- Team leaders and decision makers who need to set sensible AI policies and evaluate tools.
- Curious learners with basic computer and internet skills. No coding or mathematics background is needed.
Benefits
- Understand what AI, machine learning, deep learning and generative AI really mean, and separate facts from hype.
- Learn the history and key milestones that explain why today's tools behave as they do.
- Master prompt engineering principles and techniques to obtain accurate, well-formatted and reliable outputs.
- Use conversational assistants, grammar and paraphrasing tools, document question answering and summarisation confidently in daily work.
- Create images, video, voice and music responsibly, and transform existing images with professional workflows.
- Boost productivity in Excel, PowerPoint, email and data analysis with AI support, while verifying results.
- Understand multimodal AI, including visual question answering and image captioning, and apply it to accessibility and business.
- Apply ethical, legal and privacy safeguards: bias awareness, copyright, consent, deepfake defence and data protection.
- Gain practical templates, checklists and activities that you can reuse immediately.
- Earn a certificate of completion by finishing all lessons and passing the section quizzes.
Disclaimer
AI tools and their features change rapidly. Always confirm current capabilities, pricing and policies on official provider pages. This course provides general educational information and is not legal, medical or financial advice.