Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are powerful machine learning models capable of generating realistic image, video, and voice outputs. They are algorithmic architectures that use two neural networks, pitting one against the other in order to generate new instances of data.

Rooted in game theory, GANs have wide-spread application: from improving cybersecurity by fighting against adversarial attacks and anonymizing data to preserve privacy to generating state-of-the-art images, colorizing black and white images, increasing image resolution, creating avatars, turning 2D images to 3D, and more.

As computing power has increased, so has the popularity of GANs and its capabilities. GANs have opened up many new directions: from generating high amounts of datasets for training machine learning models and allowing for powerful unsupervised learning models to producing sharper, discrete, and more accurate outputs. GANs have also informed research in adjacent areas like adversarial learning, adversarial examples and attacks, model robustness, etc.

The DeepLearning.AI Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) Specialization provides an exciting introduction to image generation with GANs, charting a path from foundational concepts to advanced techniques through an easy-to-understand approach. It also covers social implications, including bias in ML and the ways to detect it, privacy preservation, and more.

Build a comprehensive knowledge base and gain hands-on experience in GANs. By the end, you would have trained your own model using PyTorch, used it to create images, and evaluated a variety of advanced GANs.

Specialization: Gain practical knowledge of how generative models work. Construct and design your own generative adversarial model. Analyze how generative models are being applied in various commercial and exploratory applications.

Course 1: In this course, you will understand the fundamental components of GANs, build a basic GAN using PyTorch, use convolutional layers to build advanced DCGANs that processes images, apply W-Loss function to solve the vanishing gradient problem, and learn how to effectively control your GANs and build conditional GANs.

Course 2: In this course, you will understand the challenges of evaluating GANs, compare different generative models, use the Fréchet Inception Distance (FID) method to evaluate the fidelity and diversity of GANs, identify sources of bias and the ways to detect it in GANs, and learn and implement the techniques associated with the state-of-the-art StyleGAN.

Course 3: In this course, you will use GANs for data augmentation and privacy preservation, survey more applications of GANs, and build Pix2Pix and CycleGAN for image translation.

This Specialization is for software engineers, students, and researchers from any field, who are interested in machine learning and want to understand how GANs work.

This Specialization provides an accessible pathway for all levels of learners looking to break into the GANs space or apply GANs to their own projects, even without prior familiarity with advanced math and machine learning research.

Learners should have a working knowledge of AI, deep learning, and convolutional neural networks. They should have intermediate Python skills as well as some experience with any deep learning framework (TensorFlow, Keras, or PyTorch). Learners should be proficient in basic calculus, linear algebra, and statistics.

We highly recommend that you complete the Deep Learning Specialization prior to starting the GANs Specialization.

After completing this Specialization, you will have learned how to achieve the state-of-the-art in realistic generation. You will be able to generate realistic images, edit those images by controlling the output in a number of ways (eg. convert a horse to a zebra or lengthen your hair or make yourself older), quantitatively compare generators, convert an image to another (eg. turning a sketch into a photo-realistic version), animate still images, solve many of the challenges that GANs are notorious for, and more.

This Specialization was created by Sharon Zhou, a CS PhD candidate at Stanford University, advised by Andrew Ng. Sharon Zhou’s work in AI spans from theoretical to applied, in medicine, climate, and more broadly, social good. Previously a machine learning product manager at Google and various startups, Sharon is a Harvard graduate in CS and Classics. She likes humans more than AI, though GANs occupy a special place in her heart.

This is a Specialization made up of 3 courses.

You can enroll in the DeepLearning.AI GANs Specialization on Coursera. You will watch videos and complete assignments on Coursera as well.

We recommend taking the courses in the prescribed order for a logical and thorough learning experience.

A Coursera subscription costs $49 / month.

Yes, Coursera provides financial aid to learners who cannot afford the fee. Visit the Coursera Course Page and click on ‘Financial Aid’ beneath the ‘Enroll’ button on the left.

> Yes! You can preview the course for free by accessing the entire first module at no cost. This allows you to explore the learning experience before deciding if you’d like to continue. If you want full access to all modules, assessments, and the certificate of completion, you’ll need to upgrade to the paid version.

You will receive a certificate at the end of each course if you pay for the courses and complete the programming assignments. There is a limit of 180 days of certificate eligibility, after which you must re-purchase the course to obtain a certificate. If you audit the course for free, you will not receive a certificate.

If you complete all 3 courses in the GANs Specialization and are subscribed to the Specialization, you will also receive an additional certificate showing that you completed the entire Specialization.

This specialization consists of three courses. At the rate of 5 hours a week, it typically takes 3-4 weeks to complete each course.