GSP1154

Overview

Vertex AI is a comprehensive machine learning development platform that provides both predictive and generative AI capabilities. It allows you to train, evaluate, and deploy predictive machine learning models for forecasting purposes. Additionally, you can utilize the platform to discover, tune, and serve generative AI models to produce content.

Vertex AI Studio lets you quickly test and customize generative AI models so you can leverage their capabilities in your applications. It provides a variety of tools and resources including both UI (user interface) and coding examples that make it easy to start with generative AI, even if you don't have a background in machine learning.

This lab guides you through Vertex AI Studio, where you'll unlock the potential of cutting-edge generative AI models. You'll explore Gemini and use it to analyze images, design prompts, and explore multimodal capabilities directly in the Google Cloud console. No need for API or Python SDKs - it's all accessible through the intuitive user interface.

Objectives

In this lab, you will learn how to:

• Analyze images with Gemini multimodal.
• Explore multimodal capabilities.
• Design prompts with examples.
• Design prompts with context.

Setup and requirements

Before you click the Start Lab button

Read these instructions. Labs are timed and you cannot pause them. The timer, which starts when you click Start Lab, shows how long Google Cloud resources are made available to you.

This hands-on lab lets you do the lab activities in a real cloud environment, not in a simulation or demo environment. It does so by giving you new, temporary credentials you use to sign in and access Google Cloud for the duration of the lab.

To complete this lab, you need:

• Access to a standard internet browser (Chrome browser recommended).

Note: Use an Incognito (recommended) or private browser window to run this lab. This prevents conflicts between your personal account and the student account, which may cause extra charges incurred to your personal account.

• Time to complete the lab—remember, once you start, you cannot pause a lab.

Note: Use only the student account for this lab. If you use a different Google Cloud account, you may incur charges to that account.

How to start your lab and sign in to the Google Cloud console

1. Click the Start Lab button. If you need to pay for the lab, a dialog opens for you to select your payment method. On the left is the Lab Details pane with the following:

   • The Open Google Cloud console button
   • Time remaining
   • The temporary credentials that you must use for this lab
   • Other information, if needed, to step through this lab

2. Click Open Google Cloud console (or right-click and select Open Link in Incognito Window if you are running the Chrome browser).

   The lab spins up resources, and then opens another tab that shows the Sign in page.

   Tip: Arrange the tabs in separate windows, side-by-side.

   Note: If you see the Choose an account dialog, click Use Another Account.

3. If necessary, copy the Username below and paste it into the Sign in dialog.

   {{{user_0.username | "Username"}}}

   You can also find the Username in the Lab Details pane.

4. Click Next.

5. Copy the Password below and paste it into the Welcome dialog.

   {{{user_0.password | "Password"}}}

   You can also find the Password in the Lab Details pane.

6. Click Next.

   Important: You must use the credentials the lab provides you. Do not use your Google Cloud account credentials. Note: Using your own Google Cloud account for this lab may incur extra charges.

7. Click through the subsequent pages:

   • Accept the terms and conditions.
   • Do not add recovery options or two-factor authentication (because this is a temporary account).
   • Do not sign up for free trials.

After a few moments, the Google Cloud console opens in this tab.

Note: To access Google Cloud products and services, click the Navigation menu or type the service or product name in the Search field.

Task 1. Analyze images with Gemini

In this section, you will use Gemini to analyze an image and extract information from it. You can design prompts for various tasks such as classification, extraction, and generation.

1. In the Google Cloud console, from the Navigation menu (), select Vertex AI > Vertex AI Studio > Create prompt.

The UI contains three main sections:

• System Instructions (located at the top): a set of instructions that the model processes before it processes prompts. When a system instruction is set, it applies to the entire request. It works across multiple user and model turns when included in the prompt. We recommend that you use system instructions to tell the model how you want it to behave and respond to prompts.
• Configuration (located on the right): This section allows you to select models (including 3rd party models), configure parameters, use Tools (such as grounding), and set advanced options.
• Prompt (located at the bottom): Here, you can create a prompt that utilizes multimodal capabilities.

2. On the top left, click Untitled Prompt and rename your prompt as Image Analysis.

3. In the Configuration section on the right, ensure the model is selected. You can click switch model to change the model if needed, or browse other available models.

Note: The model name and version may change with the release of new models.

4. In the Configuration section on the right, toggle the Advanced options, and for Region, select .

5. Download the sample image. Right-click the timetable image and then save it to your desktop.

6. On the bottom right of the Prompt section, click the Insert Media () button.

7. In the Select source menu, click Upload then select the timetable image you downloaded. The media can be in the form of an image, video, text, or audio file.

8. The image will be displayed inside of the Prompt section. Copy the following text and paste it under the image and click on the Submit arrow button on the bottom right of the Prompt section or press Enter.

Title the image.

Or be more specific:

Title the image in 5 words.

Does the title meet your expectations? Try to modify the prompt to see if you get different results.

9. Next, you'll get Gemini to describe the image in detail. Replace the previous prompt with the following and click the Submit arrow button.

Describe the image in detail.

10. In the Configuration section, toggle the Advanced options, and adjust the Temperature by scrolling from left (0) to right (2). Resubmit the prompt to observe any changes in the outcome compared to the previous result.

Note: Temperature controls the degree of randomness in token selection. Lower temperatures are good for prompts that expect a true or correct response, while higher temperatures can lead to more diverse, unexpected, or potentially biased results. With a temperature of 0 the highest probability token is always selected.

11. Extract the text from the image. Replace the previous prompt with the following:

Read the text in the image.

Further on, if you want to format the output to a list, replace the previous prompt with the following:

Parse the time and city in this image into a list with two columns: time and city.

Your turn - try out some different prompts! How do these results differ from before?

12. Analyze the information on the image. Replace the previous prompt with the following:

Calculate the percentage of the flights to different continents.

Does the result meet your expectations? You are highly encouraged to try different prompts for various tasks. You are also encouraged to experiment with different temperature settings to observe the changes in the result.

13. Once you finish the prompt design, save the prompt by clicking Save on the top right of the toolbar. For the region, select from the dropdown and then confirm by clicking Save.

14. To find your saved prompts, on the left-hand navigation menu, navigate to Prompt Management.

Note: After selecting Save, give the prompts a few seconds to properly save and then proceed further with the lab.

Click Check my progress to verify the objectives.

Extract the content of the image.

Task 2. Explore multimodal capabilities

In addition to images, text, and audio, Gemini is capable of accepting videos as inputs and generating text as an output.

1. Navigate to Cloud Storage > Buckets and copy the name of your Cloud Storage bucket and save it to use in the further step: .

2. Click Activate Cloud Shell at the top of the Google Cloud console.

3. In your Cloud Shell terminal, run the command below to copy the sample video gs://spls/gsp154/video/train.mp4 (preview) to your Cloud Storage bucket. Replace <Your-Cloud-Storage-Bucket> with the bucket name you copied earlier.

gcloud storage cp gs://spls/gsp154/video/train.mp4 gs://<Your-Cloud-Storage-Bucket> Note: Make sure to replace the <Your-Cloud-Storage-Bucket> with your bucket name.

4. From the Navigation menu (), select Vertex AI > Vertex AI Studio > Create prompt.

5. In the Configuration section on the right, ensure the model is selected.

Note: The model name and version may change with the release of new models.

6. Toggle the Advanced options, and for Region, select .

7. On the bottom right of the Prompt section, click the Insert Media () button.

8. In the Select source menu, select Import from Cloud Storage.

9. Click on your bucket name and then click on the sample video train.mp4 and click Select.

10. Generate information about the video by inserting the following prompt and clicking the Submit arrow button.

Title the video.

11. Describe the video in detail:

Describe the video in detail.

Check out more information about designing multimodal prompts.

Task 3. Design prompts with examples

In this section, you will explore designing text prompts in Vertex AI Studio.

Prompt design

You can feed your desired input text, e.g. a question, to the model. The model will then provide a response based on how you structured your prompt. The process of figuring out and designing the best input text (prompt) to get the desired response back from the model is called Prompt Design.

Prompt design methods

There are three main methods to design prompts:

• Zero-shot prompting - This is a method where the LLM is given only a prompt that describes the task and no additional data. For example, if you want the LLM to answer a question, you just prompt "what is prompt design?".
• One-shot prompting - This is a method where the LLM is given a single example of the task that it is being asked to perform. For example, if you want the LLM to write a poem, you might give it a single example poem.
• Few-shot prompting - This is a method where the LLM is given a small number of examples of the task that it is being asked to perform. For example, if you want the LLM to write a news article, you might give it a few news articles to read.

Parameters

Temperature and Token limit are two important parameters that you can adjust to influence the model's response.

• Temperature controls the randomness in token selection. A lower temperature is good when you expect a true or correct response. A temperature of 0 means the highest probability token is always selected. A higher temperature can lead to diverse, unexpected, or potentially biased results. The model has a temperature range of 0 - 2 and a default of 1.
• Output token limit determines the maximum amount of text output from one prompt. A token is approximately four characters.

Zero-shot prompting

1. Click the Clear icon on the toolbar to clear the prompt.

2. In the Configuration section on the right, ensure the model is selected.

Note: The model name and version may change with the release of new models.

3. Toggle the Advanced options, and for Region, select .

4. Copy the following over to the prompt input field:

What is a prompt gallery?

5. Click on the Submit arrow button.

The model will respond to a comprehensive definition of the term prompt gallery.

6. Here are some exploratory exercises to explore. Using the same prompt, in the Advanced field in the Configuration section:

• Adjust the Output Token limit parameter to 1024 and click the SUBMIT arrow button.
• Adjust the Temperature parameter to 0.5 and click the SUBMIT arrow button.
• Adjust the Temperature parameter to 2.0 and click the SUBMIT arrow button.

Inspect how the responses change as to change the parameters.

One-shot prompting

You can design prompts in more organized ways. You can provide Context and Examples in their respective input fields. One-shot prompting is a method where the model is given a single example of the task that it is being asked to perform. In this section, you will ask the model to complete a sentence.

1. Click the Clear icon on the toolbar to clear the prompt.

2. On the bottom right of the Prompt section, click the Add Examples () button.

This will open a new window where you can add examples for the prompt.

3. Add this to the INPUT field:

The color of the grass is

4. Add this to the OUTPUT field:

The color of the grass is green

5. Click on the Add examples button.

6. Once you've added your example, you should see two sections that need to be filled: {Input} and Prompt. To submit your prompt, you will need to provide another example input, as well as the prompt.

7. In the {INPUT} field, write the following:

The color of the sky is

8. In the Prompt field, write the following:

Answer the following questions.

Your Prompt section should resemble the following:

9. Click on the Submit arrow button. You should receive a response from the model similar to the following:

The color of the sky is blue

Instead of completing the sentence, the model gave a full sentence as a response since you provided an example for the model to base its output from. To change the response to simply complete the sentence, you can adjust the example provided in the OUTPUT field.

10. Click the Edit button in the Prompt box to edit your prompt:

11. Click on the Examples to edit the example and then change the output to:

Green

Your Example prompt should now be:

input: The color of the grass is output: Green

12. Click on the Submit arrow button. You should receive a response from the model similar to the following:

Blue

You can see that the model now completes the sentence based on the example you provided. You have successfully influenced the way the model produces response.

Few-shot prompting

For the next practice, you will use the model to perform sentiment analysis on a sentence, such as determining whether a movie review is positive or negative using few-shot prompting.

1. Click the Clear icon on the toolbar to clear the prompt.

2. On the bottom right of the Prompt section, click the Add Examples () button.

3. Add the following examples:

INPUT	OUTPUT
A well-made and entertaining film	positive
I fell asleep after 10 minutes	negative
The movie was ok	neutral

4. Once you have added the examples, click on the Add examples button.

5. Once you've added your example, you should see two sections that need to be filled: {Input} and Prompt. To submit your prompt, you will need to provide another example input, as well as the prompt.

6. In the {INPUT} field, write the following:

It was a time well spent!

7. In the Prompt field, write the following:

Perform sentiment analysis on the following text.

8. Click on the Submit arrow button. You should receive a response from the model similar to the following:

positive

The model now provides a sentiment for the input text. For the text It was a time well spent!, the sentiment is labeled as positive.

9. Once you finish the prompt design, name the prompt as Sentiment Analysis.

10. Save the prompt by clicking Save on the top right of the toolbar and select the region.

Note: if you prompt is already saved with the Autosave functionality, ensure the name of the prompt is correct and you can see it in the Prompt Management page.

Click Check my progress to verify the objectives.

Create prompts with text

Task 4. Design prompts with context

System instructions are initial directives that shape a model's behavior and responses to subsequent prompts, allowing for customization of persona, format, tone, and specific task rules. They persist across multiple user-model interactions within a request, but users should avoid including sensitive information due to potential data use policies.

These instructions are versatile, enabling applications like chatbot development, structured output generation, and language-specific responses, although they do not guarantee complete protection against unintended model behaviors.

1. In the Google Cloud console, from the Navigation menu (), select Vertex AI > Vertex AI Studio > Create prompt.

2. In the Configuration section on the right, ensure the model is selected.

Note: The model name and version may change with the release of new models.

3. In the Configuration section on the right, toggle the Advanced options, and for Region, select .

For this section, you will add system instructions for the model and let it respond based on the context provided.

4. Click System instructions and add the following context:

Your name is Roy. You are a support technician of an IT department. You only respond with "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" to any queries.

5. Insert the following prompt:

My computer is so slow! What should I do?

6. Click the Submit arrow button.

The model should respond with the following:

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

7. In System instructions, click Clear value ().

8. Click System instructions and add the following context:

Your name is Roy. You are a support technician of an IT department. You are here to support the users with their queries.

9. Insert the following prompt:

My computer is so slow! What should I do?

10. Click the Submit arrow button.

The model should now be more helpful in its response to the user query.

Feel free to experiment with different prompts and context to see how the model responds. You can also add more context to the chat prompt to see how the model responds based on the context provided.

11. Once you finish the prompt design, name the prompt as Support Technician Helper.

Click Check my progress to verify the objectives.

Create conversations with chat prompt

Congratulations!

Congratulations! In this lab, you successfully leveraged Gemini's capabilities to analyze multimedia content, including images and videos. You demonstrated proficiency in zero-shot, one-shot, and few-shot prompting techniques for question answering and sentiment analysis. Furthermore, you effectively utilized system instructions to build a basic IT chatbot.

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Manual Last Updated April 09, 2025

Lab Last Tested April 09, 2025

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