Learn Artificial Intelligence Imagery Skills at Zero Cost: Unlock Free Course Hacks on Udemy, as Revealed by ZDNet

Eugene Mymrin/Getty Images

Over the past few months, I’ve been diving into AI courses that are free for anyone to take. Thanks to the absolute explosion of generative AI , there are a lot of courses out there.

Recently, I spotlighted courses from IBM, Amazon, and OpenAI and DeepLearning. Here are those articles:

In this article, I’m expanding outside of the vendor-provided courses. As you might imagine, the vendor-provided courses all have a bit of their own marketing spin in them. Don’t get me wrong. They’re excellent courses. But this time, we’re moving to courses made by third parties and hosted on Udemy .

I’m doing two Udemy articles. This one will focus more on generative AI graphics, although some courses are a mix of text and graphics. The next one will be all about text-based generative AI.

What is Udemy?

Udemy is an online learning platform that hosts courses created by individual trainers. Trainers don’t have to jump through too many hoops to get on the platform, but they are subject to student ratings. Of course, effective trainers will attract more students and higher ratings.

Also: The best AI image generators to try right now

Udemy sells courses individually, a la carte. It also sells a $20/month plan , where you can consume as many courses as you want during the months you pay. Think of this as an educational Netflix plan.

So what’s the free trick?

As mentioned in the title of this article, you can take these AI classes for free. The “trick” is that Udemy offers a 30-day free trial period , after which you will be charged. But most of the courses are fairly short.

One I checked out was a total of six hours over a bunch of modules. The biggest I’ve seen is all of 15 hours of content. If you really want to do some learning about AI and you want to do it for free, anyone who’s serious should be able to churn through a bunch of these classes within a month’s time.

If you decide to stay on for a Udemy membership after your trial period is over, $20/month isn’t all that bad a fee to pay for the number of courses Udemy offers, including those well beyond AI.

Newsletters

ZDNET Tech Today

ZDNET’s Tech Today newsletter is a daily briefing of the newest, most talked about stories, five days a week.

See all

5 AI image courses to check out on Udemy

Here are five courses you’re sure to benefit from taking.

ChatGPT Complete Guide: Learn Midjourney, ChatGPT 4 & More
4.5 stars (26,655 ratings) - 158,703 students
Improve efficiency and effectiveness by fine-tuning skills in ChatGPT, Google Bard, Microsoft Bing, and 25 other useful AI tools.

How to use ChatGPT and Generative AI to help create content
4.5 stars (41,898 ratings) - 77,098 students
Generate high-quality content, automate tasks, and unleash creativity by learning to use cutting-edge language models such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Midjourney to create a wide range of written content, including blog articles and code.

ChatGPT, Midjourney, DALL-E 3 & APIs - The Complete Guide
4.6 stars (7,683 ratings) - 47,171 students
This is an AI course that covers it all. Learn the basics of ChatGPT-powered copywriting, blog post and article generation, email draft generation, text summaries, translations and more.

Midjourney Mastery: Create Visually Stunning AI Art
4.3 stars (2,190 ratings) - 11,795 students
Learn how to use Midjourney to create art and master this revolutionary new medium.

Prompt Engineering with ChatGPT 4 & Midjourney 2000+ prompts
4.4 stars (939 ratings) - 8,348 students
Learn how to access the full potential of AI as a means of saving time, automating tedious tasks, and improving overall efficiency.

I spent some time in the Midjourney Mastery, and although I’ve done a ton already with Midjourney , I did learn a few things that I’ll be putting to use in future projects.

Stay tuned, because I have another set of Udemy courses coming, this time focusing on ChatGPT and text-based generative AI.

Also: How to use Midjourney to generate amazing images and art

What about you? Did you take any of these courses? What did you learn? Let us know in the chat below.

You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly update newsletter on Substack , and follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz , on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz , on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz , and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV .