Generative AI can transform your business by streamlining the process of creating text, images, and code. This book will show you how to get in on the action!
Generative AI in Action is an engaging, practitioner-focused companion that reveals how large language models drive transformative software solutions. Building on Amit Bahree’s extensive background in AI and machine learning, it illustrates core concepts by demonstrating text, image, and even music generation—spotlighting the versatility of these models. Beyond the technical fundamentals, it delves into deployment best practices, performance considerations, and ethical responsibilities, ensuring you’re well-prepared to bring generative AI into enterprise contexts with confidence.
Inside Generative AI in Action you will find:
• A practical overview of of generative AI applications
• Architectural patterns, integration guidance, and best practices for generative AI
• The latest techniques like RAG, prompt engineering, and multi-modality
• The challenges and risks of generative AI like hallucinations and jailbreaks
• How to integrate generative AI into your business and IT strategy
Generative AI in Action is full of real-world use cases for generative AI, showing you where and how to start integrating this powerful technology into your products and workflows. You’ll benefit from tried-and-tested implementation advice, as well as application architectures to deploy GenAI in production at enterprise scale.
Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF and ePub formats from Manning Publications.
About the technology
In controlled environments, deep learning systems routinely surpass humans in reading comprehension, image recognition, and language understanding. Large Language Models (LLMs) can deliver similar results in text and image generation and predictive reasoning. Outside the lab, though, generative AI can both impress and fail spectacularly. So how do you get the results you want? Keep reading!
About the book
Generative AI in Action presents concrete examples, insights, and techniques for using LLMs and other modern AI technologies successfully and safely. In it, you’ll find practical approaches for incorporating AI into marketing, software development, business report generation, data storytelling, and other typically-human tasks. You’ll explore the emerging patterns for GenAI apps, master best practices for prompt engineering, and learn how to address hallucination, high operating costs, the rapid pace of change and other common problems.
What’s inside
• Best practices for deploying Generative AI apps
• Production-quality RAG
• Adapting GenAI models to your specific domain
About the reader
For enterprise architects, developers, and data scientists interested in upgrading their architectures with generative AI.
About the author
Amit Bahree is Principal Group Product Manager for the Azure AI engineering team at Microsoft.
The technical editor on this book was Wee Hyong Tok.
Table of Contents
Part 1
1 Introduction to generative AI
2 Introduction to large language models
3 Working through an API: Generating text
4 From pixels to pictures: Generating images
5 What else can AI generate?
Part 2
6 Guide to prompt engineering
7 Retrieval-augmented generation: The secret weapon
8 Chatting with your data
9 Tailoring models with model adaptation and fine-tuning
Part 3
10 Application architecture for generative AI apps
11 Scaling up: Best practices for production deployment
12 Evaluations and benchmarks
13 Guide to ethical GenAI: Principles, practices, and pitfalls
A The book’s GitHub repository
B Responsible AI tools
From the Publisher





Publisher : Manning
Publication date : October 29, 2024
Language : English
Print length : 464 pages
ISBN-10 : 1633436942
ISBN-13 : 978-1633436947
Item Weight : 1.7 pounds
Dimensions : 7.38 x 1 x 9.25 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #509,536 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #150 in Natural Language Processing (Books) #164 in Artificial Intelligence Expert Systems #831 in Artificial Intelligence & Semantics
Customer Reviews: 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars (16) var dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction; P.when(‘A’, ‘ready’).execute(function(A) { if (dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction !== true) { dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction = true; A.declarative( ‘acrLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault”: true }, function (event) { if (window.ue) { ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } } ); } }); P.when(‘A’, ‘cf’).execute(function(A) { A.declarative(‘acrStarsLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault” : true }, function(event){ if(window.ue) { ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } }); });
5 reviews for Generative AI in Action
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Original price was: $59.99.$48.86Current price is: $48.86.


Kettleback –
This is an evergreen book on Generative AI
I am writing a review of a book that is a must-read for AI enthusiasts, written by my colleague Amit Bahree, who was instrumental in jumpstarting my career in technology.**Generative AI in Action** by Amit Bahree is a must-read for anyone interested in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence. This comprehensive guide not only introduces the fundamental principles of AI but also delves into its practical applications in an enterprise context. From generating text and images for product catalogs and marketing campaigns to technical reporting and even writing software, this book covers it all.What sets this book apart is Amit Bahree’s extensive experience leading Generative AI projects at Microsoft for nearly a decade. His insights and real-world examples provide a concrete understanding of how generative AI can be leveraged in various business scenarios. The book is particularly timely, given the current GPT revolution, and offers valuable perspectives on the future of AI.Moreover, **Generative AI in Action** emphasizes the importance of identifying new scenarios enabled by generative AI technologies. It encourages readers to explore innovative ways to harness the full potential of these technologies, making it an invaluable resource for anyone aspiring to champion generative AI in their organization.Overall, “Generative AI in Action” is an invaluable resource for both beginners and seasoned professionals looking to deepen their knowledge of generative AI and its applications. Highly recommended!
chris –
Excellent book for learning advanced applications of GAI
This book was the textbook for a college course that was the most interesting class I have taken. I learned how to fine-tune a foundation model, prompt engineering, and many more skills.
Sirius –
5 ⭐️
I am very satisfied with the book. Thank you to the author.
Louis L. –
Good background on Gen AI, using API, prompt engineering, and discussions of ethics issues
(Disclaimer: I served as a reviewer for the publisher as this book was being written)Generative AI in Action is a good introduction to many aspects of Generative AI (Gen AI). It covers:1. Overview of Gen AI and Large Language Models (LLM). What Gen AI can do, where it fits in with other AI techniques (e.g., machine learning including deep learning). How Gen AI models are developed; foundational models and transformer architecture. The concepts of prompts and tokens.2. Use of Chat GPT Application Programming Interface (API). Programming with ChatGPT with Python. Note: I generally use Google Gemini. General concepts and programming patterns transfer immediately (there are libraries that allow seamless switching) Some specific settings/terms are ChatGPT specific. Note that while things change in this world, the Github repository that is associated with the book and code is kept up to date with changes in ChatGPT API.3. Prompt engineering. How to write prompts or series of prompts to get the best results. This works both through the web/text interfaces and through the API.4. Deployment, ethics, and other issues. Discussions on how to use this in practical contexts. Both the mechanics of using this is aa practical setting. but also a discussion on ethical issues that you should work through to ensure that Gen AI is giving useful answers, or is it giving problematic answers because of its nature and the nature of the training data (the content available on the internet.I work with Gen AI regularly with a range of diverse business partners within my company. This ranges from highly technically proficient computer engineers, to other data specialists of various types, to management, to subject matter experts, to creative content creators. This book covers both breadth in the four areas discussed here, but in enough depth to enable sophisticated use of Gen AI and to have meaningful conversations across the range of people who are interested parties in practical applications for a new methodology. Which is appropriate for an “in Action” book title.
Amazon Customer –
You won’t learn anything that you can’t find in blogs or ask ChatGPT
Really confused about “Generative AI in Action”. There is a lot of repetitive boilerplate probably created by an LLM (I have read that GenAI can be helpful in healthcare at least three times in the first 150 pages)There is no depth in the chapters that discuss models and applications, and what else can AI generate chapter is a marketing pitch from GitHub Copilot.I bought this book hoping I could find better information than what I can find in blogs or ask to ChatGPT, but I have been negatively surprised. Not worth the purchase