AI course guides
Guides to learning AI skills, using official US data first. For individual certifications, see the certification pages.
How do you choose an AI certification?
AI certifications compared: cost, who can take them, statusThe AI certification programs to start with are Google Cloud's Generative AI Leader if you don't code and AI-901 if you do.
Google AI Essentials vs the AI Professional Certificate: which to takeGoogle AI Essentials is the short start (4 hours to complete); the AI Professional Certificate is longer (8 hours to complete).
Gen AI certification compared: AWS, Google Gen AI Leader, AI-901Pick the gen AI certification for the cloud you use: AWS AI Practitioner for AWS, Generative AI Leader for Google Cloud, AI-901 for Azure.
Free AI certification: courses with a free certificate or badgeYou can earn a free AI certification by passing Oracle's Agentic AI Foundations Associate exam, though it expects Python.
Where do you start with each issuer's certifications?
Claude certifications: who can take them and how they workClaude certifications are only for people at Claude Partner Network organizations.
IBM AI certificates: AI engineering, generative AI and developerIBM AI certificates are Coursera course certificates, not exams.
Databricks Certification: AI and ML exams comparedDatabricks Certification for AI starts with two free badges, AI Agent Fundamentals and Generative AI Fundamentals.
Which AI certifications cover governance and security?
AI engineer certifications: which exam to takeThe AI engineer certification to take depends on your stack: AI-103 for Azure, AWS's Generative AI Developer Professional, Databricks' Generative AI Engineer Associate or NVIDIA's LLM associate exam.
AI governance certifications: IAPP AIGP and ISACAStart with IAPP's AIGP if you want an AI governance certification and hold no ISACA credential.
Agentic AI certifications compared: which one to takeThe agentic AI certification to take depends on your platform: AI-103 or AB-620 for Microsoft, LangChain's Certified Agent Engineer for code-first agents, or AWS's free agentic microcredentials.
Microsoft Copilot certifications: which exam to takeThe Microsoft Copilot certification to take depends on your job: AB-730 to use Copilot, AB-900 to run it, AB-620 to build Copilot Studio agents, or GH-300 for GitHub Copilot.
AI security certifications from ISACA, CompTIA and GIACIf you work in security, CompTIA SecAI+ is the AI security certification with no required credential.
AI architect certifications: which one fits your platformThe AI architect certification to take depends on your platform: AB-100 or AI-500 for Microsoft, Claude Certified Architect through a Claude partner firm, or Google's Agentic Architect once it opens.
AI certifications for beginners: which to take firstThe AI certification for beginners depends on whether you code: Google Cloud's Generative AI Leader if you don't, or AI-901 or AWS AI Practitioner if you build on Azure or AWS.
Which AI courses cover each topic?
Agentic AI course options: certifications and courses comparedFor a first agentic AI course, take OpenAI's free Agents and Workflows (1.5 hours).
AI literacy courses: what AI can do and how to check itAn AI literacy course teaches what AI tools can and can't do and how to check their output, without code.
Generative AI courses for users, leaders and developersFor a first generative AI course, Google's Introduction to Generative AI takes 45 minutes and earns a free badge.
Prompt engineering courses, from chat prompts to API workA prompt engineering course teaches you to write instructions that get reliable results from AI tools.
LLM courses for builders and for curious usersFor a free LLM course in code, Hugging Face's LLM Course runs from transformers and tokenizers to fine-tuning.
Machine learning courses for coders and non-codersFor a first machine learning course in Python, take the Machine Learning Specialization from Stanford Online and DeepLearning.AI.
Deep learning courses for people who already codePractical Deep Learning for Coders from fast.ai is a free deep learning course built on PyTorch, fastai and Hugging Face.
NLP courses, from tokenizers to language apps on AzureFor a free NLP course, Hugging Face's LLM Course teaches natural language processing with transformers, tokenizers and fine-tuning.
Computer vision courses for training models or using AzureFor a free computer vision course, take fast.ai's Practical Deep Learning for Coders, which teaches vision with PyTorch, fastai and Hugging Face.
AI ethics courses, from free principles to governance workAn AI ethics course teaches how principles such as fairness, accountability and transparency apply when people build or use AI.
AI for business courses: strategy, tools and agentsAn AI for business course teaches you where AI fits in your work and how to judge whether it pays off, without coding.
Which AI courses suit your role?
AI courses for beginners, with no coding neededThe right AI course for beginners explains what AI can and can't do, then gets you using it.
AI for managers and team leadersAI for managers courses teach you to decide where AI is worth funding, lead your team through adopting it and manage the risks.
AI courses for teachers and educatorsAI for teachers courses show you how to use tools such as Gemini and ChatGPT for lesson planning, admin and classroom work.
AI for HR professionals: courses comparedAI for HR courses teach you to use generative AI in hiring, onboarding, training and workforce planning while keeping bias and privacy in check.
AI for project managers: courses, PDUs and certificationA good first course in AI for project managers is PMI's free Generative AI Overview for Project Managers: 1 hour, beginner level, 5 PDUs.
AI engineer courses for developersAn AI engineer course teaches you to build software on top of AI models: calling APIs, retrieval (RAG), agents and evaluation.