Microsoft’s official free course (generative-ai-for-beginners) walks through all the core concepts of Generative AI in 21 lessons.

Prompt engineering, text generation, chat applications, image generation, RAG, vector databases, AI Agents, and fine-tuning — everything from the fundamentals to real-world deployment is covered.

Hands-on code in both Python and TypeScript, built by Microsoft Cloud Advocates, so even complete beginners can follow along.

Multi-language support, fully open source and free, with over 100,000+ stars on GitHub.

https://github.com/microsoft/generative-ai-for-beginners…

microsoft/generative-ai-for-beginners

Source: https://github.com/microsoft/generative-ai-for-beginners

Generative AI For Beginners

21 Lessons teaching everything you need to know to start building Generative AI applications

GitHub license (https://github.com/microsoft/Generative-AI-For-Beginners/blob/master/LICENSE?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) GitHub contributors (https://GitHub.com/microsoft/Generative-AI-For-Beginners/graphs/contributors/?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) GitHub issues (https://GitHub.com/microsoft/Generative-AI-For-Beginners/issues/?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) GitHub pull-requests (https://GitHub.com/microsoft/Generative-AI-For-Beginners/pulls/?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) PRs Welcome (http://makeapullrequest.com?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst)

GitHub watchers (https://GitHub.com/microsoft/Generative-AI-For-Beginners/watchers/?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) GitHub forks (https://GitHub.com/microsoft/Generative-AI-For-Beginners/network/?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) GitHub stars (https://GitHub.com/microsoft/Generative-AI-For-Beginners/stargazers/?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst)

Microsoft Foundry Discord (https://discord.gg/nTYy5BXMWG)

🌐 Multi-Language Support

Supported via GitHub Action (Automated & Always Up-to-Date)

Arabic | Bengali | Bulgarian | Burmese (Myanmar) | Chinese (Simplified) | Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong) | Chinese (Traditional, Macau) | Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan) | Croatian | Czech | Danish | Dutch | Estonian | Finnish | French | German | Greek | Hebrew | Hindi | Hungarian | Indonesian | Italian | Japanese | Kannada | Khmer | Korean | Lithuanian | Malay | Malayalam | Marathi | Nepali | Nigerian Pidgin | Norwegian | Persian (Farsi) | Polish | Portuguese (Brazil) | Portuguese (Portugal) | Punjabi (Gurmukhi) | Romanian | Russian | Serbian (Cyrillic) | Slovak | Slovenian | Spanish | Swahili | Swedish | Tagalog (Filipino) | Tamil | Telugu | Thai | Turkish | Ukrainian | Urdu | Vietnamese

Prefer to Clone Locally?

This repository includes 50+ language translations which significantly increases the download size. To clone without translations, use sparse checkout:

Bash / macOS / Linux: bash git clone --filter=blob:none --sparse https://github.com/microsoft/generative-ai-for-beginners.git cd generative-ai-for-beginners git sparse-checkout set --no-cone '/*' '!translations' '!translated_images'

CMD (Windows): cmd git clone --filter=blob:none --sparse https://github.com/microsoft/generative-ai-for-beginners.git cd generative-ai-for-beginners git sparse-checkout set --no-cone "/*" "!translations" "!translated_images"

This gives you everything you need to complete the course with a much faster download.

Generative AI for Beginners (Version 3) - A Course

Learn the fundamentals of building Generative AI applications with our 21-lesson comprehensive course by Microsoft Cloud Advocates.

🌱 Getting Started

This course has 21 lessons. Each lesson covers its own topic so start wherever you like!

Lessons are labeled either “Learn” lessons explaining a Generative AI concept or “Build” lessons that explain a concept and code examples in both Python and TypeScript when possible.

For .NET Developers checkout Generative AI for Beginners (.NET Edition) (https://github.com/microsoft/Generative-AI-for-beginners-dotnet?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst)!

Each lesson also includes a “Keep Learning” section with additional learning tools.

What You Need

To run the code of this course, you can use either:

• Azure OpenAI Service (https://aka.ms/genai-beginners/azure-open-ai?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) - Lessons: “aoai-assignment”

• Microsoft Foundry Models (https://ai.azure.com/catalog/models?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) - Lessons: “githubmodels” (GitHub Models is retiring at the end of July 2026 - use Microsoft Foundry Models instead)

• OpenAI API (https://aka.ms/genai-beginners/open-ai?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) - Lessons: “oai-assignment”

• Foundry Local (https://foundrylocal.ai?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) - Run models fully offline on your own device, no cloud subscription required

• Basic knowledge of Python or TypeScript is helpful - *For absolute beginners check out these Python (https://aka.ms/genai-beginners/python?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) and TypeScript (https://aka.ms/genai-beginners/typescript?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) courses

• A GitHub account to fork this entire repo (https://aka.ms/genai-beginners/github?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) to your own GitHub account

We have created a Course Setup lesson to help you with setting up your development environment.

Don’t forget to star (🌟) this repo (https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/exploring-projects-on-github/saving-repositories-with-stars?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) to find it easier later.

🧠 Ready to Deploy?

If you are looking for more advanced code samples, check out our collection of Generative AI Code Samples (https://aka.ms/genai-beg-code?WT.mc_id=academic-105485-koreyst) in both Python and TypeScript.

🗣️ Meet Other Learners, Get Support

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