Oracle Cloud Infrastructure AI Foundations Associate
The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure AI Foundations Associate is one of very few proctored AI certificates you can hold without paying anything. It asks for no coding and no prior study of machine learning.
A free path of a little over six hours, a lab, a practice test and a sixty-minute exam taken online under webcam supervision. The credential lasts two years.
Exam facts
- Exam code
- 1Z0-1122-26
- Level
- Foundational
- Field
- Data & AI
- Access
- Free
- Assessment
- Proctored exam
- Duration
- 60 minutes
- Questions
- count not read (Oracle catalogue page unavailable on 2026-09-26)
- Languages
- EnglishEnglish learning path read; Oracle's catalogue page, which lists exam languages, was down for maintenance on 2026-09-26
- Price
- Free (read 26 September 2026)
- Validity
- 2 years, renewable
- Exam delivery
- Online on Oracle MyLearn with remote proctoring (webcam, Proctorio browser extension, government ID); results in Oracle CertView
Prerequisites: None. Oracle states that no prior AI or machine-learning familiarity and no coding experience are required.
Renewal: Valid 24 months from the date earned, per Oracle's 2026 announcement; the pages read do not describe a separate renewal route
Source: exam page at Oracle · Price: Free as a standing policy, not a dated promotion: Oracle's 2026 release announcement (10 August 2026) states that every Foundations course and certification remains free, with no end date; the MyLearn path is marked free (read 2026-09-26)
How to prepare
1. The vendor's free learning path
Oracle publishes the exam objectives and a learning path free of charge — the authoritative source for scope and weighting. Open the learning path (opens in a new tab)
2. The programme
The certificate is earned inside this programme. Its facts, price and the provider's own page are on the course page; the link there carries no commission.
Affiliate disclosure: the course link above is an affiliate link — buying through them may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. The vendor's learning path and booking links carry no commission.
A vendor exam for people who are not engineers
Oracle pitches this at beginners, and the path lives up to that. It covers the core ideas of artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning and generative AI, and then shows how each is put to work in Oracle's own cloud. Nothing requires code. The lab lets you try some of the services in a real environment, which is more than most free AI introductions offer, and a practice exam sits before the real one.
| Fact | OCI AI Foundations Associate |
|---|---|
| Exam code | 1Z0-1122-26 |
| Format | Online, webcam proctored |
| Duration | Sixty minutes |
| Fee | None, as Oracle policy |
| Learning path | A little over six hours, with lab and practice exam |
| Validity | Twenty-four months |
Where the free price changes the calculation
An AI fundamentals exam from one of the larger cloud providers costs money and examines that provider's services. Oracle's examines Oracle's, and costs nothing. For a reader who wants a proctored credential to show that they understand the vocabulary of AI, that trade is attractive: the conceptual half of the syllabus is the same everywhere, and only the product half is specific. For a reader who needs to work with a particular cloud, the product half matters, and the right exam is the one for the platform in front of them.
- Good choice for managers, analysts and consultants who need to talk sensibly about AI and want a supervised exam rather than a course badge.
- Good choice for anyone in an organisation that runs Oracle databases or applications and is adding AI features to them.
- Weaker choice as the only AI credential for someone aiming at an engineering role on AWS or Azure; sit that provider's exam as well.
- Pair it with the free cloud foundations exam from the same vendor if you want the infrastructure underneath.
Exam day and the two-year clock
The proctoring is worth preparing for. Oracle's online exams run in the browser with a monitoring extension, your webcam on and an identity check against a government document, so a quiet room and a tidy desk matter as much as revision. The exam's web address describes it as unproctored, a leftover of its not needing a test centre; the check-in steps on Oracle's own exam pages say otherwise.
Validity is the one point where Oracle's offer is weaker than a paid rival. Oracle states that its cloud certifications last twenty-four months, and the exam code changes with each annual edition, so a certificate earned today describes the syllabus of one year. Microsoft's AI fundamentals certificate, by contrast, does not expire. For a conceptual credential that is less of a problem than it sounds: the ideas in the first half of the syllabus change slowly, and anyone who wants the certificate current can sit the next edition for nothing. The practice exam in the path is the best predictor of the real one, and it is worth taking twice, once early to find the gaps and once at the end to check they are closed. Treat any topic you guessed at as a gap, even if the guess was right.
What a question looks like
Written by us in the exam's style. It is not a real question from any question bank, and we do not publish those.
A support team wants its chatbot to answer questions using the company's own policy documents, which change every month, without retraining a model each time. Which approach fits best, and what does it need that the model alone does not have?
Fine-tuning sounds like the obvious answer and is the wrong one here. The question rewards recognising retrieval-augmented generation, and knowing that it depends on a searchable store of the documents, a distinction any serious generative AI syllabus draws.
What it costs to get and to keep
| Item | Amount | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Exam | 0 USD | free under Oracle's standing policy for Foundations certifications, restated in the 2026 release announcement with no end date (read 26 September 2026) |
| Learning path and lab | 0 USD | the MyLearn path is marked free and includes an Oracle University lab (read 26 September 2026) |
| Renewal after 24 months | not published | validity stated by Oracle; no separate renewal route described on the pages read (read 26 September 2026) |
How much preparation, from where you are
- AI is new to you and you do not code
- The intended reader. Take the practice exam seriously: it shows whether you can tell the model types and the Oracle services apart under time pressure.
- You hold another vendor's AI fundamentals certificate
- The concepts will be familiar. Concentrate on Oracle's own AI services and on how its generative AI offering is organised.
- You build machine-learning systems
- You will pass comfortably; whether the credential is worth an hour depends on whether Oracle matters to your clients.
What passing this does not prove
- Writing code, training models or evaluating them with real data.
- Mathematics behind machine learning.
- Services from any provider other than Oracle.
- Judgement about when not to use AI, beyond the conceptual material on responsible use.
Against the alternatives
- Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-901)
- Microsoft's AI fundamentals exam never expires and is the better-known name, but it costs a fee. Oracle's is free and lasts two years. If Azure is your platform, take Microsoft's; otherwise Oracle's is the cheapest supervised AI credential available.
- AWS Certified AI Practitioner (AIF-C01)
- AWS's AI practitioner exam examines AWS's own AI services and carries AWS's name, for a fee. Oracle's is a free first step that covers the concepts; sit the AWS exam if you will build on AWS.
- AI Fundamentals: Foundations for Understanding AI
- IBM's free course badge covers similar concepts with no proctoring and no expiry. IBM's is a gentler learning experience; Oracle's is the one with an identity-checked exam behind it.
1Z0-1122-26 — quick answers
Is the OCI AI Foundations exam free?
Yes. In its 2026 release post Oracle commits to keeping all Foundations learning and exams at no cost, naming no cut-off date, and the learning path is marked free on Oracle's learning platform.
Do I need to know how to code?
No. Oracle states that neither coding experience nor prior knowledge of AI or machine learning is required.
How long does preparation take?
Oracle's path lists a little over six hours, made up of a course of about four hours, a two-hour lab and short preparation lessons, followed by a sixty-minute exam.
How long is it valid?
Two years. Oracle's release post puts the life of its cloud certifications at 24 months from award.
What is the current exam code?
1Z0-1122-26. The certification's title no longer includes a year, but the exam code still identifies the 2026 edition.
Where this exam sits in the field
What comes next
- Oracle · 1Z0-1085-26Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Foundations Associate
- IBM · Course completionAI Fundamentals: Foundations for Understanding AI
- Microsoft · AI-901Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals
- AWS · AIF-C01AWS Certified AI Practitioner
- Microsoft · Lab-based assessmentMicrosoft Applied Skills: Get started developing agents in Microsoft Foundry
Concepts this exam draws on
Glossary entries with the reason each one matters for 1Z0-1122-26.
- ML
The path's opening concepts.
- Deep Learning
Covered as a core topic.
- GenAI
Generative AI and its use in OCI are a main block.
Last reviewed 26 September 2026 · Getting Digital