From Novice to User: First Steps with the Gemini API

created by meta.ai

This guide demonstrates how to integrate Google’s Gemini API into your Python projects. We’ll begin with the essential first step: installing the Python SDK.

pip install google-generativeai

Confirm this by running the command

import google.generativeai as genai 

Obtaining an API Key

1. Visit https://aistudio.google.com/app/apikey
2. Log in to your Google account if prompted.
3. Look for the option to generate an API key.
4. Click to create a new API key.

Generate and copy your API key, then set it in your Python environment.

import os 

os.environ['GOOGLE_GEMINI_API_KEY'] = 'YOUR_API_KEY'

List all the models available

for model in list(genai.list_models()): 
    if 'generateContent' in model.supported_generation_methods: 
        print(model.name)

Output: 

models/gemini-1.0-pro
models/gemini-1.0-pro-001
models/gemini-1.0-pro-latest
models/gemini-1.0-pro-vision-latest
models/gemini-1.5-flash
models/gemini-1.5-flash-001
models/gemini-1.5-flash-latest
models/gemini-1.5-pro
models/gemini-1.5-pro-001
models/gemini-1.5-pro-latest
models/gemini-pro
models/gemini-pro-vision

Using Gemini Flash to Generate a Joke

To test the API, we’ll use Gemini Flash to generate a simple joke:

model = genai.GenerativeModel(model_name='gemini-1.5-flash')
prompt = 'Tell me a joke' 
response = model.generate_content(prompt) 

print(response.text)

Output:

"Why don't scientists trust atoms? \n\nBecause they make up everything! \n"