A guide to AI certifications

If you are looking to find a job in a competitive field, you’ll want every edge you can get. One of the best ways to get that edge is to stay on top of the latest developments in technology and their application in your field, which, at the present moment, means learning how to apply artificial intelligence applications to your work. One of the best ways to signal this knowledge to prospective employers is to become certified in some aspect of the practical use of AI. AI skills jumped 25% year over year, LinkedIn’s 2025 Hiring Report shows This article aims to help you understand how to become certified and how to best prepare for the process of earning a certificate or certification.

One consideration when you are looking to become AI certified is whether you are interested in becoming certified in the use of AI or the design and training of AI. This tends to be a pretty easy choice to make since graphic designers, investment bankers, and content creators know that they won’t need to learn how to make their own algorithms while aspiring data scientists are generally aware that they will need to understand how to write and train generative AI algorithms.

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An overview of AI certificates and certifications

While they may seem interchangeable, it is important to note that certificates and certifications are not the same thing. While they are both means of demonstrating your proficiency with AI tools, they demonstrate this proficiency in different ways. A certification is awarded to students who complete a proctored, first-party skills exam that demonstrates their understanding and practical abilities to use AI-related tools. Certificates, on the other hand, are more akin to diplomas, and they are awarded to students who complete a professional skills development program.

The choice of which to pursue will largely come down to your own level of experience with AI tools and whether or not you feel that you would benefit from a professional training bootcamp. Students who have substantial experience working with AI tools at a professional level are most likely to benefit from the convenience of a certification exam, which will be much faster and significantly less expensive (because the exams tend to last for less than two hours and don’t come with any training or support). By contrast, since these exams tend to provide virtually no support for students in training, if you aren’t comfortable enough with your skills to be confident that you will pass the exam, it is likely that you will want to pursue a certificate instead.

Is an AI certificate or certification right for me?

The journey to learning AI skills and what type of training to pursue will depend on several different factors, such as your current skill level and how much time you have to dedicate to learning. Below are some questions you can ask yourself to help figure out if a certificate program or another training method is best for your goals.

• Do you have any experience working with AI tools?
• If you’re a complete beginner, a certificate course that starts with AI fundamentals and works through more complex elements may be a good place to start.
• Are you comfortable with independent learning?
• It’s not uncommon for self-paced learning courses to be more flexible when it comes to scheduling and progressing through materials compared to live courses.
• Is your goal to make a career switch or boost your current role?
• If you already use AI tools in your everyday workflow, opting for certification is an excellent way to showcase those skills and move up in your current position.

How to become certified in AI

Currently, the primary mode of earning an AI certification comes from earning a certification in a program, application or skill that has integrated AI in some way. For example, if you are a graphic designer interested in a certification that includes AI, the Adobe Certified Professional exam for programs including their Firefly AI assistant (such as Photoshop or Illustrator). This is largely because there is no single, universal AI tool that is utilized across the board, and companies like Microsoft and OpenAI are updating their AI tools so quickly that a certification exam would risk being outdated virtually as soon as it is released. As such, if you are looking to learn how to use AI in a practical context, your options for certification exams will be more practical than anything.

If you are looking to work on the technical side of artificial intelligence, there are plenty of certificate-granting courses available to you since AI is one of the new technologies that every company is looking to start integrating into their business practices. These certificate programs, like the Data Science & AI Certificate offered by Noble Desktop, aim to provide students with the technical training they need to start creating and training their own personalized artificial intelligence algorithms. These courses are aimed at students who are looking to become professional programmers and data scientists, making them ideal for beginners who aspire to a high-paying, in-demand career. These are career-focused courses, so all of the lessons covered focus on practical, real-world exercises that mirror the kinds of AI-related work that programmers can expect to encounter in their regular workday.
There are also similar certificate-granting courses available for a wide range of different subjects that are adjacent enough to warrant mention. For example, aspiring graphic designers can enroll in a program like Noble Desktop’s Graphic Design Certificate program and learn all they need to know about professional visual design tools and principles. This includes the use of AI tools integrated into the Adobe Creative Cloud, meaning that professional designers will also be getting a certificate in the programs that are most commonly associated with AI in their specific field. This is a far more roundabout way of approaching the issue of certification, but it is one of the best ways to cover all of your bases as you seek to demonstrate your skill in career-relevant fields.