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From Fixing Emails to Building an AI Assistant: How One Google AI Learner Got There

Article Summary

This post follows Lorraine Wright, an HR professional, as she goes from using AI to fix her own writing to co-creating with it after taking Google's AI courses. Her biggest breakthrough came in an app-building module, where she used Google AI Studio to prototype an "HR Assistant" that answers natural-language employee questions using the university's benefits pages. Lorraine now promotes the courses to colleagues and sees her Google certificate as a boost to her professional credibility.

Lorraine Wright didn’t come to AI as a skeptic. She was already curious about what these tools could do for her day-to-day work in Human Resources at a major public research university in North Carolina, she just hadn’t found the right way yet. That changed once she started building real skills with Google’s AI courses.

“I am a techie kind of person, and I embrace technology,” Lorraine says. “I’m always on the lookout for Google courses because I had a good experience previously with them. So, I was very excited to discover the Google AI Courses and Certification.”

While Lorraine was already experimenting with AI tools like Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini at the university, her perspective shifted from using AI to fix her own work to co-creating with AI after taking the Google AI content creation course. Before that, Lorraine would draft an email and then ask AI to rewrite it. After learning more about prompting and AI capabilities, she flipped her workflow.

“I realized I could get AI to write this for me and then I can tweak it. That was a huge eye-opener for me,” she explains. “That was a big gain for me from a productivity perspective.”

The most tangible result of Lorraine’s training came during a module on app building. Using Google AI Studio, Lorraine developed a prototype for a custom “HR Assistant” designed to solve a common pain point: the language barrier between HR professionals and employees.

“In HR, we have a search bar on our benefits page, but if you don’t search for the right word, it can be difficult to find what you need,” Lorraine notes. For example, an employee might not know the term “Qualifying Life Event.” Instead, they just want to know, “How do I add my husband to my insurance?”

Lorraine’s AI Assistant solves this by acting as a “smart layer” over the university’s web pages.

I built my own HR assistant that is linked to our HR page. Now I can type a question in natural language and my app goes and finds the answer on our web page. It figures it out and brings it all back, including a link to where the answer is found, which I can then share with an employee.

Lorraine Wright

Lorraine Wright

H.R employee at a major public research university in North Carolina

Lorraine’s experience was so transformative that she began promoting the Google AI courses to her leadership and co-workers.

For Lorraine, her certificate is more than just a set of new skills. It’s a mark of professional credibility. “I think it adds a lot of value to me as an employee by saying I have a Google certificate in this,” she says. “It has a lot of brand recognition. When you say ‘I have a certificate from Google’, the response is always ‘Oh wow, Google.’ And I agree. It truly elevates your professional profile and opens up entirely new possibilities.”

If Lorraine’s story has you thinking about building something of your own, our AI for App Building & Deployment course is the place to start. You can also explore our other Google AI courses here: