Track A — Functional AI

Generative AI for Marketers

Go from AI-curious to AI-fluent — and walk out with a complete, AI-built marketing portfolio.

UC Santa Cruz ExtensionThree live online classes + a final project. Each class blends short concept blocks, live demos, quick “tastings,” and longer hands-on labs.● Starts Jun 20, 2026
FreeMore than $2,000 of value
What this class is

A hands-on, no-code course that teaches non-technical marketers to use generative AI across the whole job: research, content, agents, and discovery. You survey a fast-moving landscape, learn just enough of the foundations to be dangerous, and build real deliverables in every session — culminating in a complete AI-generated marketing portfolio.

Who it's for — Marketers and communicators with no coding background — anyone who wants AI to do their existing job dramatically better.

What you'll be able to do
  • Create marketing content — text, image, audio, and video — with AI tools and assistants
  • Prompt effectively using a repeatable six-principle framework
  • Run competitive and market research with Deep Research agents and RAG
  • Build and schedule marketing automations as reusable AI “skills”
  • Deploy an always-on marketing assistant and make your brand findable by AI (GEO)
  • Apply AI responsibly — disclosure, copyright, bias, and data privacy
The AI agents you'll build

You leave with An always-on marketing agent that runs your campaigns end to end.

These aren't demos — they're working agents you build hands-on and tailor to your own role, data, and custom spec.

Email Triage Automation

A Claude Cowork skill that reads, sorts, and drafts replies to inbound email, packaged as a reusable, scheduled task.

Outbound Campaign Generator

An automation that produces a full outbound marketing campaign on demand, turned into a saved skill the marketer can re-run.

Invoice Processing Automation

A Cowork automation that extracts and totals invoice data using real spreadsheet formulas instead of hallucinated numbers.

Drafter–Critic Strategy Agent

A two-persona agent pair where one drafts campaign strategy and a skeptical CMO critiques and scores it over several rounds until it's board-ready.

Telegram Marketing Agent (Nanobot)

A locally-run, always-on agent reachable from your phone that runs scheduled intelligence scans and generates content and images on demand.

The path

How you build them, class by class

1Foundations, prompting, and research tools

AI Fluency for Marketers

  • How models are trained and why they hallucinate — just enough foundations
  • The six prompting principles, and weak vs. strong prompts
  • The chat-assistant landscape and when to use which
  • Deep Research agents and RAG for competitive analysis
2From static workflows to autonomous agents

AI Agents for Marketing

  • The six-level autonomy ladder, with marketing examples at each
  • Claude in Chrome for competitive intel and data extraction
  • Claude Cowork: email triage, campaign generation, and invoice processing
  • The Drafter–Critic pattern for dramatically better output
3The full production stack and being found by AI

AI Content Production & Marketing Assistants

  • Presentations, podcasts, images, and video — the complete content stack
  • Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): getting cited by AI assistants
  • Build an always-on marketing agent on Telegram
  • Pull it all together into your final portfolio
The tools that matter

The names the whole industry runs on.

01

ChatGPT

The app that put generative AI in front of the world — and became the fastest consumer application ever to reach 100 million users.

02

Claude

The assistant marketers reach for when the work has to be right — and the engine behind the Cowork automations and in-browser research you build in this class.

03

Gamma

One of the most widely adopted AI design tools — turns a prompt into a finished, on-brand deck in minutes, no slide-wrangling required.

Plus the rest of the working stack — Claude · ChatGPT · Gemini · Perplexity · Deep Research · NotebookLM · Gamma · Canva · ElevenLabs · NanoBanana · Recraft · Veo 3.1 · Kling · Runway · Claude in Chrome · Claude Cowork · MCP · Nanobot on Telegram · Ollama.

Your capstone

Your hands-on capstone: a complete AI-built marketing portfolio for your product — positioning, a campaign strategy, an AI-built presentation, product images, a Telegram-agent asset set, and audio or video. It's the work your certificate is based on, and a portfolio you can show an employer.

Your certificate is based on what you build — not attendance.

Ready to build your AI agent?

A small, high-quality cohort for leaders — fully online, hands-on from minute one.