How to Use AI Like a Pro: A Beginner’s Guide to Get You Started

AI or Artificial Intelligence is not just a sci-fi term anymore; it has become a part of our everyday lives, and understanding how to use it is a crucial skill to have nowadays. But many beginners find it quite overwhelming to learn how to use AI, and where to even start. That’s what I am here to show you how to use AI and get the most out of this transformative technology.

How to Get Started with AI?

Learning how to use AI is actually easier than you might think because you don’t need to ask questions in a certain, programmatic way. Just talking or typing your prompt in natural language is enough, as large language models (LLMs) are built to understand it.

You can write something like, “I need help writing an email to my boss, asking for a few days off. Can you help me with that?” and the AI will handle the rest. It’s so seamless and unbelievably simple to get started with, and there are so many things you can do with it. Let me show you how.

1. How to Use AI for Writing and Brainstorming

The most common use of AI is for writing, changing the tone of the sentence, proofreading, and brainstorming. If you have ever stuck in writer’s block, need help to complete an assignment before the deadline, or want some fresh ideas, then AI chatbots can surely help you with that.

AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot, which come pre-installed on your phone or computer, excel at generating quick outlines, full drafts, or just help redraft the tone of that email. All you need to do is just the chatbot and follow the below steps.

1. Launch ChatGPT, or your preferred AI chatbot like Gemini, Claude, or Copilot.
2. In the text box, write a prompt in natural language such as, “Write a 200-word short story about industry revolution.”
3. Wait for it to come up with a response.
4. If you need to tweak it further, write,“Make it more casual,” or “Add bullet-points”.
5. Once you are done, just copy the result and paste it wherever required.

Best AI chatbots to use for writing: ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot.

2. How to Use AI to Generate Images or Illustrations

You might have seen plenty of AI-generated images floating around on Facebook, Instagram or other social media platforms. Well, this is another field where AI is taking the world by storm and it’s only because AI models can not only generate text, but can also produce images and videos.

Using AI image generators like ChatGPT, Gemini or Midjourney, you can generate an incredibly photorealistic image, or produce your image with a celebrity. It can even generate posters, logos, artworks, illustrations, without you ever needing to learn Photoshop or other image editing tools. So here’s how it works.

1. Open your preferred AI app, or website.
2. Type a prompt something like, “Create an image of a realistic cat flying a modern aeroplane.”
3. Wait as AI model turn your text prompt into an image which you can download and share.
4. For more accurate results, you can add more details like “cartoonish, realistic style, pastel tones, wide camera angle and more.”
5. The more descriptive you are, the better results you will get.

Best AI Image Generation Tools to Use: Gemini Nano Banana, ChatGPT, and Midjourney.

3. How to Use AI to Generate Videos

Many people have also started using AI for video generation nowadays. Those videos are going viral on TikTok, Instagram, X, and Facebook. There are AI video generation models from Google Veo, and OpenAI Sora which offer the best results. In fact, now, videos are being generated with audio, and they look quite authentic.

To use AI for video generation, all you need to do is, share a descriptive text prompt for the video just like how you do for creating an image, and the AI will bring your ideas to life, creating an 8 second clip. The more descriptive you are, the better the results will be. You can also add your own dialogues for the characters to speak, and describe the overall scene as well. Let me show you how to use AI for making videos.

1. Open Google Gemini and tap on the Tools option.
2. Select Create videos with Veo.

3. Enter your prompt, such as, “a drone shot over a beach during sunset with relaxing music.”
4. AI will create a video from scratch, based on your prompt which you can download later.

5. You can further set the mood, style, add characters too. Then hit generate.
6. You can also tweak the result if you don’t want it by asking AI to create another one.

Best AI Tools for Video Generation: Google Gemini Veo, OpenAI Sora, Meta AI App

4. How to Use AI to Increase Productivity

AI is not just for creating images or videos, it can even help you with your everyday work. Whether you want to summarize a report, create a pie chart, produce a presentation, etc., you can use AI for all these things.

I personally use AI to help me break down documents by uploading it to apps like ChatGPT or NotebookLM, and then ask it to explain the document in simple language, and highlight key points. But it can also be used to do repetitive tasks like organizing your Notion calendar, or drafting an email in Gmail. Google’s Workspace and Microsoft’s Office suite already feature AI integration.

1. Open ChatGPT, and tap on the “+” icon next to the text box.
2. Select Files attachment and upload your document.

3. Now, you can ask AI anything related to it, for example, “Give me the key highlights of this report”
4. Once you got the results, you can copy or save it to share it with the team.

Best AI tools to improve productivity: NotebookLM, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot.

5. How to Use AI for Learning and Studying

If you are a student, you need to use AI as it simplifies learning and makes complex topics easier to understand. You can learn with AI at your pace. For example, you can ask it to “explain nuclear fission like I am a 5 year old.”

It can also summarize notes, or give you important pointers about a topic. You can also use AI to quiz you, or turn your notes into bite-sized flashcards. I would suggest using ChatGPT’s Study mode to learn about concepts and solve hard problems. If you prefer Gemini, you can use its Guided Learning feature to grasp a concept.

Even if you have a toddler, you can use Google Gemini’s Storybook feature to create a custom bedtime story to help them start learning early. But don’t use it as a shortcut to write your assignments or homeworks. Let me show you a quick example of how to use AI to help with your studies.

1. Open ChatGPT and choose “Study and learn” under the “+” button.
2. Now, type your question and it will start asking you questions instead of generating the answer in one go.
3. This way, you can learn about a complex topic in no time.
4. By the way, you can also ask, “Make me three flashcards based on the topic.”
5. Next, you can upload your school notes or PDFs and the AI will summarize it for you.

Best Tools: ChatGPT, Gemini, NotebookLM, Claude.

6. How to Use AI for Code Generation

AI is increasingly being used for coding and there are many AI code editors like Cursor and GitHub Copilot that can make development much faster and easier. So if you are a developer, you can use AI for coding, bug fixing, building new features, and more. In this realm, Anthropic’s Claude Opus and OpenAI’s GPT-5 Codex are two great AI models for coding. You can use them on Cursor effortessly.

This brings us to the end of this article and we have only managed to cover the tip of the iceberg. But it should be enough to help you understand, all the ways you can use AI. Once you get the hang of it, you can bring it to use even more regularly in your everyday life. Whether it is for budgeting, coding, helping with emotional needs or coming up with random solutions. Just be specific about what you want it to do, and it will take care of the rest.