GCP: Gemini API Fundamentals
Build real applications with Google's Gemini API in Python — text generation, vision, chat, and function calling from scratch.
About This Course
Master the Google Gemini API using Python. Learn to generate text, work with multimodal inputs (images, PDFs), build multi-turn chat applications, and implement function calling. All exercises use the Python AI container with the google-generativeai SDK and real API calls against Gemini 2.0 Flash.
Course Curriculum
6 Lessons
GCP: Introduction to Gemini & the Gemini API
Learn what Gemini is, explore the model family (2.0 Flash, 1.5 Pro, 1.5 Flash), understand the API architecture, authentication with API keys, safety settings, and pricing model.
GCP: Your First Gemini API Calls
Set up the Python SDK, configure your API key, generate text with Gemini 2.0 Flash, tune model parameters, and stream responses — all from the VS Code terminal with real API calls.
GCP: Multimodal & Advanced Gemini Features
Learn how Gemini processes images and other media types, build multi-turn chat conversations with history, implement function calling to connect Gemini to your own Python functions, and use system instructions and JSON output mode.
GCP: Building a Gemini Chat Application
Build a complete multi-modal chat application using the Gemini API. You'll implement multi-turn conversations, image analysis, function calling, and combine everything into a production-ready chat app with streaming.
GCP: AI Image Generation — Nano Banana 2 and Pro
Learn how Google's Nano Banana image generation models work — Nano Banana 2 (gemini-3.1-flash-image-preview) for fast, high-volume generation and Nano Banana Pro (gemini-3-pro-image-preview) for maximum quality with built-in thinking. Understand the image generation API, response_modalities, ImageConfig parameters, and when to choose each model.
GCP: Hands-On Image Generation with Nano Banana
Use the Gemini image generation API in VS Code to generate images from text prompts, edit reference images, build a multi-turn image editing session, and compare the quality output of Nano Banana 2 versus Nano Banana Pro. All exercises use the new google-genai SDK.