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⇱ Fine-Tune & Optimize Generative AI Models | Coursera


Fine-Tune & Optimize Generative AI Models

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Fine-Tune & Optimize Generative AI Models

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Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
Intermediate level

Recommended experience

5 hours to complete
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace

Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
Intermediate level

Recommended experience

5 hours to complete
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace

What you'll learn

  • Apply decoding strategies (e.g., temperature, top-k, top-p, beam search) to control model outputs for quality, diversity, and relevance.

  • Evaluate AI-generated text using automated metrics and frameworks to systematically assess fluency, coherence, and factual accuracy.

  • Implement parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) techniques to create domain-adapted foundation models while balancing cost-performance trade-offs.

Details to know

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Assessments

1 assignment¹

AI Graded see disclaimer
Taught in English

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This course is part of the Build Next-Gen LLM Apps with LangChain & LangGraph Specialization
When you enroll in this course, you'll also be enrolled in this Specialization.
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  • Gain a foundational understanding of a subject or tool
  • Develop job-relevant skills with hands-on projects
  • Earn a shareable career certificate

There are 3 modules in this course

In today’s AI-driven world, optimizing large language models for specific domains while managing cost is a key competitive skill. This course trains AI engineers, ML practitioners, and data scientists to transform baseline generative models into efficient, production-ready solutions. Through hands-on labs using Hugging Face Transformers, PEFT, and Evaluate, you’ll master decoding strategies (temperature, top-k, top-p, beam search), automated evaluation (BLEU, ROUGE, BERTScore, custom metrics), and parameter-efficient fine-tuning (LoRA) that cuts trainable parameters by 99% without losing quality. Real-world projects cover fine-tuning 7B+ models for legal, medical, and financial applications while analyzing GPU and inference costs. The capstone simulates real constraints—limited GPU memory, latency, budget, and compliance—requiring technical, analytical, and executive deliverables. By course end, you’ll confidently optimize and evaluate LLMs, balancing quality, performance, and cost for advanced roles in LLM engineering, MLOps, and AI product development.

This course is ideal for DevOps engineers, SREs, cloud engineers, and developers who manage containerized applications and want to streamline deployments using Helm. It’s also suited for technical leads and engineers who design or maintain CI/CD or GitOps pipelines for modern, scalable systems. Participants should have basic proficiency in Python, an understanding of machine learning fundamentals, and familiarity with natural language processing (NLP) concepts and machine learning frameworks to fully engage with the course content. Participants should have basic proficiency in Python, an understanding of machine learning fundamentals, and familiarity with natural language processing (NLP) concepts and machine learning frameworks to fully engage with the course content.

This module introduces learners to decoding strategies and parameters that control how generative AI models produce text. Learners will explore the mechanics of temperature, top-k, top-p sampling, and beam search, understanding how these parameters influence output diversity, coherence, and relevance. Through hands-on experimentation, learners will gain practical skills in tuning these parameters for different use cases.

What's included

5 videos2 readings1 peer review

5 videosTotal 41 minutes
  • Welcome to Generative AI Optimization2 minutes
  • How Generative Models Produce Text: From Probabilities to Words7 minutes
  • Temperature, Top-k, and Top-p: The Control Knobs of Generation9 minutes
  • Tuning Decoding Parameters in Practice Part 112 minutes
  • Tuning Decoding Parameters in Practice part 211 minutes
2 readingsTotal 10 minutes
  • Welcome to the Course: Course Overview5 minutes
  • Beam Search vs. Sampling: Choosing the Right Strategy for Your Application5 minutes
1 peer reviewTotal 20 minutes
  • Hands-On-Learning: Tuning LLM Decoding Parameters for Content Generation20 minutes

This module equips learners with systematic approaches to evaluate AI-generated text using automated metrics and evaluation frameworks. Learners will explore metrics like BLEU, ROUGE, perplexity, BERTScore, and task-specific evaluation methods, understanding both their capabilities and limitations. The module emphasizes when automated metrics suffice and when human evaluation remains essential.

What's included

4 videos1 reading1 peer review

4 videosTotal 36 minutes
  • Traditional Metrics: BLEU, ROUGE, and Perplexity Explained9 minutes
  • Task-Specific Evaluation: Factuality, Coherence, and Relevance9 minutes
  • Building an Automated Evaluation Pipeline Part 19 minutes
  • Building an Automated Evaluation Pipeline Part 28 minutes
1 readingTotal 5 minutes
  • Modern Semantic Metrics: BERTScore, BLEURT, and Beyond5 minutes
1 peer reviewTotal 20 minutes
  • Hands-On-Learning: The Evaluation Breakdown: When Metrics Mislead and How to Fix It 20 minutes

This module introduces learners to parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) techniques that enable domain adaptation of large language models without the computational and memory costs of full fine-tuning. Learners will explore methods like LoRA, prefix tuning, and adapter layers, understanding the cost-performance trade-offs and practical implementation strategies for real-world applications.

What's included

4 videos1 reading1 assignment2 peer reviews

4 videosTotal 28 minutes
  • The Cost Problem: Why Full Fine-Tuning Doesn't Scale6 minutes
  • PEFT Methods Compared: LoRA, Prefix Tuning, and Adapters8 minutes
  • Implementing LoRA Fine-Tuning with PEFT Library13 minutes
  • Course Wrap-Up2 minutes
1 readingTotal 5 minutes
  • LoRA Deep Dive: Low-Rank Adaptation Explained5 minutes
1 assignmentTotal 20 minutes
  • Fine-Tune & Optimize Generative AI Models20 minutes
2 peer reviewsTotal 120 minutes
  • Hands-On-Learning: The Domain Adaptation Dilemma: LoRA vs Full Fine-Tuning for Medical AI 60 minutes
  • Project: Building and Optimizing a Domain-Specific Generative AI Assistant60 minutes

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¹ Some assignments in this course are AI-graded. For these assignments, your data will be used in accordance with Coursera's Privacy Notice.