From Scratch to AI Chatbot: Using Python and Gemini API

In this article, we’re going to do something really cool: we’re going to build a chatbot using Python and the Gemini API. This will be a web-based assistant and could be the beginning of your own AI project. It’s beginner-friendly, and I’ll guide you through it step-by-step. By the end, you’ll have your own AI assistant!

What You’ll Need

• IDE (I recommend Visual Studio Code)
• Gemini API key
• Python
• Python libraries

Visual Studio Code

To get started, you can use any IDE you like, but if you don’t have one, please download VS Code. It’s really powerful and easy to use.

Create a Google Cloud Project

Before we obtain an API key, we need to create a project in Google Cloud. To create a project, please follow this link: https://console.cloud.google.com/cloud-resource-manager

How to Get Gemini API Key

To get the API key, visit https://aistudio.google.com/app/apikey and click on the “Create API key” button. Then, select the project that you created in the previous step from the drop-down menu and click “Generate API key”.

Gemini API Key

Install Python

Windows:

Download the installer from https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/

Linux (Ubuntu/Debian):

Use this command in your terminal window: sudo apt-get install python3

Install Python Libraries

For the next steps, you need to use the terminal. If you are on Windows, you can use https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n0dx20hk701?rtc=1&hl=en-us

Install PIP

After we set up Python, we need to set up the pip package installer for Python.

sudo apt install python3-pip

Set Up a Virtual Environment

The next step is to set up virtual environments for our project to manage dependencies separately.

sudo apt install python3-venv

python3 -m venv myprojectenv

source myprojectenv/bin/activate

Install LangChain

LangChain is a framework designed to simplify the creation of applications using large language models.

pip install langchain-core

Install LangChain-Google-GenAI

This package contains the LangChain integrations for Gemini through their generative-ai SDK.

pip install langchain-google-genai

Install Flask

Once the virtual environment is activated, we can use pip to set up Flask.

pip install Flask

Create a ChatBot with the Python Flask Framework

First, let’s create a directory for our app.

mkdir myflaskapp

cd myflaskapp

Inside the directory, create a file for our app and call it “app.py”.

Create an HTML Page for the Flask App

You can create your own HTML or use the example provided.

You can download it from here: https://github.com/proflead/gemini-flask-app/blob/master/web/index.html

You will need 2 JavaScript files:

To communicate with the Gemini API: https://github.com/proflead/gemini-flask-app/blob/master/web/gemini-api.js

And https://github.com/proflead/gemini-flask-app/blob/master/web/main.js

To format the output result on the page without reloading the page.

Change app.py

Let’s modify our app.py file with the following code:

You can copy the code from here: https://github.com/proflead/gemini-flask-app/blob/master/app.py

Once you are ready, run this command in the project folder:

python3 app.py

If you did everything correctly, you will be able to see your ChatBot.

As you can see, building a chatbot with Python and the Gemini API is not that difficult. You can further improve it by adding styles, extra functions, or even vision recognition. If you run into any issues, feel free to leave a comment explaining your problem, and I’ll try to help you.

Your ChatBot