10 Best AI Courses and Certifications in 2025

Artificial intelligence is arguably the fastest-growing industry today, and nearly every professional is looking for new ways to use it in their jobs.

One way to become more proficient in AI is through courses. In fact, searches for “AI Courses” have risen by 1,900% over the past five years.

Search interest for “AI Courses” has exploded over the previous five years.

What does this mean for the AI industry?

For starters, there should be a growing number of people in the workforce who have a better understanding of what AI is, how it works, and how to use it for different specialties.

Whether you're a developer building new apps or a marketer trying to automate daily tasks, mastering AI skills is crucial for staying competitive.

Below, we reveal the top ten AI courses and certifications that can turn you into an expert.

Best AI Courses

1. How to Become an AI-Powered Marketer

Course creator: Semrush Academy

Time to complete: 1 hour

Level: Beginner

Speciality: Marketing

Price: Free, with certificate

What It Is: Semrush's How to Become an AI-Powered Marketer is their first AI course and provides actionable, easy-to-follow lessons for beginner and intermediate marketers.

The course shows marketers how to integrate generative AI into marketing workflows, focusing on strategy development, campaign execution, and content creation. Within the course, you'll learn how Semrush's AI tools (e.g., ContentShake AI, Market Explorer) work and how they can improve your marketing processes.

In total, there are 15 lessons, all packed with practical examples. I enjoyed the sections on AI prompting, AI tools for SEO and content, using AI for personalized customer experiences, and tips on using AI in existing workflows.

The course's creator, Michael Olaye, has 25+ years of marketing experience and shares expert tips and tactics throughout. Additionally, there are multiple lessons with walkthroughs from industry experts.

For example, you'll learn how to create a marketing strategy using AI from Rafal Tromczynski, the CEO of Digital First AI.

If you're a digital marketer, small business owner, or content creator, using AI in your marketing could be a way to unlock more growth without increasing your budget.

Ready to get started? Enroll in Semrush Academy’s How to Become an AI-Powered Marketer to master AI-driven strategies and unlock the full potential of Semrush’s AI tools today.

2. AI for Marketing

Course creator: HubSpot Academy

Time to complete: 2-3 hours, self-paced

Level: Beginner

Speciality: Marketing

Price: Free, with certificate

What It Is: AI for Marketing is HubSpot’s free course designed for general marketers, small business owners, or anybody who wants to understand how to implement marketing strategies using AI. The course heavily focuses on content, SEO, and customer engagement with integrations available for HubSpot’s AI tools.

In total, the course includes 6 lessons, 15 videos, and 4 quizzes. The course flow is extremely simple. You'll start with an intro to AI terminologies and basic concepts before moving into prompts. The course also includes a detailed lesson on predictive analytics and the importance of AI in reporting to help marketers make better decisions.

3. Piloting AI in Marketing

Course creator: Marketing AI Institute

Time to complete: 8-9 hours, self-paced

Level: Beginner

Speciality: Marketing

Price: $299

What It Is: Piloting AI for Marketers is a course for beginner marketers at all levels. It offers tips and strategies from both Paul Roetzer (founder and CEO) and Mike Kaput (chief content officer). Within this course, you'll find 18 on-demand courses on identifying high-impact AI use cases, evaluating AI vendors, and launching pilot programs.

These two experts explain the basics of AI and how it works before going into great detail on the practical AI marketing frameworks available. I found this course to be helpful because it goes a little further than just explaining concepts, as it includes additional case studies and 100+ marketing-specific AI applications for different types of marketers.

4. Generative AI for Everyone

Course Creator: DeepLearning.AI

Time to Complete: 6-10 hours, self-paced

Level: Beginner

Speciality: Generative AI

Price: Free to enroll, $49 for certificate (via Coursera)

What It Is: Generative AI for Everyone, led by Andrew Ng, teaches marketers and professionals how to apply generative AI for content creation and business strategies. I found this to be one of the best beginner-friendly courses, especially for non-technical learners, because of how much detail it goes into when covering prompt engineering and real-world AI use cases.

According to Coursera, over 1.8 million people are already enrolled in this course, and it's one of the most popular AI courses I've seen. Andrew explains new AI concepts and applications in simple but coherent language.

The course catalog estimates 6 hours to complete, but it took me around 8 hours because of the depth of the content and quizzes at the end of each section.

5. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Course Creator: IBM

Time to Complete: 10-12 hours, self-paced

Level: Beginner

Speciality: General AI Techniques

Price: Free to enroll, $49 for certificate (via Coursera)

What It Is: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an extensive beginner's course for students, business professionals, marketers, and those looking to switch careers. It covers core AI concepts like machine learning, neural networks, and ethics with simple explanations for non-technical students.

All of the course's students rave about the hands-on labs, which specifically help students learn practical ways to use IBM Watson. Personally, I thought the AI ethics and governance was a bit complex for a beginner's course, but it opens the door to these concepts that may come in handy later.

6. Artificial Intelligence for Beginners

Course creator: Microsoft

Time to complete: ~12 weeks, 24 lessons, 2-4 hours/week, self-paced

Level: Beginner

Speciality: AI Techniques and AI Ethics

Price: Free

What It Is: Artificial Intelligence for Beginners is Microsoft's take on AI. The course offers a beginner-friendly curriculum despite covering some advanced and highly technical concepts, such as neural networks, deep learning, computer vision, and natural language processing using TensorFlow and PyTorch.

I found that this course really put an emphasis on diving into concepts and frameworks, rather than covering specific use cases for business or chatbots. If you're just a marketer or student looking to learn about AI, I’d probably start elsewhere first because this course really focuses on technical topics and concepts. You also need to set up your development environment to even begin.

7. AI Essentials

Course Creator: Google

Time to Complete: ~5 hours, self-paced

Level: Beginner

Speciality: Generative AI Productivity

Price: Free to enroll, $49 for certificate (via Coursera)

What It Is: AI Essentials is a beginner specialization course by Google. It primarily teaches students and business professionals how to use generative AI tools with real-world examples.

This is a 5-course series and includes the following:

• Course 1: Introduction to AI
• Course 2: Maximize Productivity With AI Tools
• Course 3: Discover the Art of Prompting
• Course 4: Use AI Responsibly
• Course 5: Stay Ahead of the AI Curve

I found this to be one of the better courses for beginners because it's concise and wastes no time showing students how they can integrate AI into their daily tasks. It's arguably the best course out there to learn the basics, especially for productivity and prompting.

8. Elements of AI

Course creator: University of Helsinki and Reaktor

Time to complete: ~6 weeks, self-paced (10-30 hours total)
Level: Beginner & Intermediate

Speciality: AI Techniques and Programming

Price: Free, with certificate

What It Is: Elements of AI combines a two-part course, "Introduction to AI" and "Building AI," that teach beginners AI fundamentals, from concepts and societal impacts to algorithms like neural networks. No math or coding is required for the first part, though basic Python helps for the second.

I found the interactive exercises to make some of these complex ideas a lot easier to understand. But without Python knowledge, I had a hard time with the "Building AI" modules. I would recommend other courses first to brush up on your programming skills before jumping right into this more advanced course.

9. Machine Learning Crash Course

Course creator: Google

Time to complete: 15 hours, self-paced

Level: Intermediate

Speciality: Machine Learning

Price: Free, with badges

What It Is: The Machine Learning Crash Course introduces beginners and developers to core machine learning concepts like linear regression, neural networks, and large language models through 25+ lessons and 130+ exercises. It’s a fast-paced course with various animated videos, interactive visualizations, and hands-on practice exercises to help students grasp concepts in different ways.

Course modules are divided into different categories, including ML models, data, advanced ML models, and real-world ML. I found the course's bite-sized videos to be most helpful. They really broke down complex topics like gradient descent and made them surprisingly approachable.

10. CS50's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python

Course creator: Harvard University (Led by David J. Malan and Brian Yu)

Time to complete: 7 weeks, 10-20 hours/week, self-paced

Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Speciality: AI and machine learning with Python programming

Price: Free to audit, $299 for verified certificate (via edX)

What It Is: CS50's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python teaches intermediate learners and developers to build AI systems using Python. The course covers graph search algorithms, neural networks, and large language models through hands-on projects like chatbots and games.

I was amazed by how its practical coding exercises simplified complex AI concepts. It's the ideal course for those with some Python experience hoping to create intelligent applications. But since many of the artificial intelligence principles are quite advanced, this is only a course for people with previous Python and AI-related knowledge.

Which AI Course Should You Choose Based on Your Career Goals?

Your career goals will dictate the best AI course for you. Based on my experience, these are the three I recommend:

• For beginners, I recommend Google AI Essentials. If you’re new to using LLMs and AI, it’s best to take this one before branching out into something more advanced.
• For marketing specialists, Semrush Academy is a practical, hands-on course that gives you a broad introduction to the tools and technologies you need.
• If you’re new to coding or need a refresher, Harvard's CS50 AI certification gives you a solid foundation in programming.