# Generative AI for Beginners

Source: https://freeaicourses.com/courses/generative-ai-for-beginners
Last checked: 2026-09-15

## Who it is for

- Developers new to LLMs
- People who want to build a chatbot or search tool

## Who should skip it

- People who never want to write code
- Anyone who wants to train models from scratch

## What you can do afterwards

- Write effective prompts in code
- Build a simple chat or search app on top of an LLM
- Understand retrieval-augmented generation

## What the course covers

- LLM fundamentals: What LLMs are and how to choose one.
- Prompting: From basic prompts to more advanced techniques.
- Building applications: Chat, search, image generation and retrieval-augmented generation.

## What works

- Covers the whole app-building workflow
- Code samples in more than one language
- Regularly updated

## What does not

- Some lessons assume Azure access
- Quality varies between lessons

## The catch

Some examples use Azure OpenAI. You can often swap in another provider, but not always easily.

## Take after

- Hugging Face LLM Course
- AI Agents Course

## Verdict

If you can code a little and want to build with LLMs rather than only use them, this is the most complete free starting point. Skim the lessons you know and build the ones you don't.

## Related pages

- [Hugging Face LLM Course](https://freeaicourses.com/courses/hugging-face-llm-course)
- [AI Agents Course](https://freeaicourses.com/courses/hugging-face-agents-course)
- [Microsoft Learn](https://freeaicourses.com/platforms/microsoft)
- [All free AI courses, rated](https://freeaicourses.com/courses)