AI Academy • Lesson 1

Getting Started With AI

Never used ChatGPT or Claude? Start here. In about five minutes, you'll learn how to open an AI assistant, ask your first question and put it to work on a simple dealership task.

Level: Basic Time: About 5 minutes Experience required: None

Step 1

Pick an AI assistant.

You don't need to understand how artificial intelligence works before you use it. Think of an AI assistant as a very capable digital helper you can talk to in everyday language.

Two popular options are ChatGPT and Claude. Both can answer questions, help you write, brainstorm ideas, summarize information and work through problems. You don't need both. Pick one and start.

ChatGPT

An AI assistant from OpenAI. You can use it from a web browser or the ChatGPT mobile app.

Open ChatGPT →

Claude

An AI assistant from Anthropic. It is also available through a web browser or mobile app.

Open Claude →

Step 2

Start a conversation.

Open your AI assistant and find the message box. You don't need special commands or computer language. Just type something you would normally ask another person.

Try this

I work at an automobile dealership. I'm completely new to AI. Give me five simple ways I could use AI during a normal workday.

Hit send and see what happens.

Congratulations — you just wrote a prompt. A "prompt" is simply the question, request or instruction you give an AI assistant.

Step 3

Don't stop at the first answer.

This is one of the biggest differences between using AI and using a search engine. If the first response isn't quite what you need, keep talking to it.

You: I'm actually a service manager. Make those examples specific to my job.

Then: Show me how I could use it to respond to an unhappy customer.

Then: Make that response shorter and less formal.

You don't have to start over. The assistant can use the conversation you've already had as context.

Think conversation, not search. Your follow-up question is often where AI becomes genuinely useful.

Step 4

Give it something real to do.

Now try a small, low-risk task from your actual workday. Here are three easy places to start.

Improve an email "Rewrite this email so it sounds professional but friendly: [paste your email]"

Plan a meeting "Create a 30-minute sales meeting agenda covering leads, appointments and follow-up."

Explain something "Explain the difference between gross profit and net profit like you're explaining it to a new dealership employee."

The more useful context you provide — what you're doing, who it's for and what you want the result to look like — the more useful the response generally becomes.

One thing you need to know before you go further

AI can be wrong. An AI assistant can produce information that sounds confident and convincing but is incorrect, incomplete or outdated.

Treat AI as an assistant, not the final authority. Verify important information, especially for legal, compliance, financial or customer-facing decisions.

Don't enter sensitive customer, employee, financial or proprietary dealership information unless your organization has approved the tool and its use for that information.

Your assignment

Use AI for one real task today.

It doesn't need to be complicated. Pick something small that you might otherwise do yourself.

Rewrite an email.
Summarize a document.
Brainstorm a customer event.
Improve a job posting.
Create a meeting agenda.
Ask it to explain something you don't understand.

Then ask at least two follow-up questions to make the answer better.

That's it. You've started using AI.

Next Lesson: How to Write a Good Prompt →