Introduction to Vertex AI

Skip this as a 'beginner Vertex AI' pick: the catalog entry for 'Introduction to Vertex AI (Beginner)' is mislabeled, and what the link delivers is solid but intermediate Google Cloud ML training, not a first AI course. The listed link (cloudskillsboost.google/paths/17) does not open a 6-hour beginner 'Introduction to Vertex AI' course — it now redirects to skills.google and lands on Google Cloud's 'Professional Machine Learning Engineer Certification' learning path, an advanced, certification-oriented track of roughly 20 activities. The genuine hands-on Vertex AI training inside that path is the skill-badge course 'Build and Deploy Machine Learning Solutions on Vertex AI' (course_templates/684), which teaches AutoML, custom training, tuning, explainability, and deployment through enterprise labs (retail lifetime-value prediction, game-churn prediction, car-part defect detection, and BERT fine-tuning for sentiment). It is solid, practical, and free to work through on Google's platform, but it is not beginner-level: Google recommends prior Python and completion of the Machine Learning Crash Course, and the wider PMLE exam it feeds into assumes 3+ years of industry experience. Treat this as intermediate Google Cloud ML training, and ignore the catalog's '4.4 / 3,800 reviews' rating — that figure could not be verified against any real source.

The underlying Google Cloud Vertex AI training (AutoML, custom training, MLOps, deployment) is genuinely useful and free to complete, but the catalog's title, '6 hours' duration, beginner framing, and 4.4/3,800 rating do not match what the link delivers (an advanced ML Engineer certification path). It is worth taking only if you already know Python and basic ML and specifically want hands-on Google Cloud / Vertex AI experience — not as a first AI course.

Best for: Data scientists, ML engineers, and cloud practitioners who already understand core machine-learning concepts and want practical, hands-on experience deploying models on Google Cloud's Vertex AI — AutoML, custom training jobs, tuning, explainability, and MLOps — ideally as preparation for the Professional Machine Learning Engineer certification.

Skip if: Complete beginners to programming or ML, anyone expecting a quick 6-hour 'intro,' learners who want generative-AI / Gemini prompt-engineering (that is the separate 'Introduction to Vertex AI Studio' course), and people unwilling to use Google Cloud credits or work inside live cloud labs.