Imagine being able to enter an Excel sheet and request any calculation or even a graph just like you would ask ChatGPT. Well, this is now possible. The first tools for processing data with artificial intelligence are already available, and today I’m going to introduce you to two of them. The first one is simpler but highly functional and ideal for obtaining data insights. The second one is more powerful, aimed at professionals, and allows you to generate various visualizations in a remarkable way. And to top it off, in this video, I’ll also tell you how Microsoft and Google plan to defend themselves from this competition and what improvements Excel and Google Sheets will experience. Let’s dive into it right now.
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Rows AI: Accessible Data Analysis with AI
The first tool I want to talk about is called Rows. Rows is a data analysis tool that stands out for two reasons. First, it is highly accessible, and second, it has a strong focus on integration with other tools. If we visit their website, we can see all the integrations they have achieved. One recent integration they made is with OpenAI, incorporating artificial intelligence into their tool in two different ways. One is through an AI analyst tool, which I’ll focus on in this video. It allows you to analyze a table with a single click, quickly gather insights from the data, and ask questions about it. The other integration is similar to the Google Docs and Sheets extension that I mentioned in a previous video, which enables the use of formulas to process information, especially textual data. I won’t delve too much into this extension in this video because it’s very similar to what I explained before, and you can find the details in the previous video.
That being said, let’s see how this tool works. When we enter the interface, we see something like this, where we can create different spreadsheets. A simple way to start is by using one of the templates they offer. If we click on “Browse,” we can see all the available templates. For example, we could use a generic template for tracking personal budgets. If we click on it and choose to use the template, it will be loaded for us. As you can see, we have a summary sheet, an expenses sheet, and an income sheet. If we go to the expenses sheet, we can edit it. While in editing mode, we notice a little button at the top that says “AI Analyst.” With a single click, this tool will process all the information in this table and provide quick insights. Here, you can see insights based on the data, such as the total value of expenses, the average value of each expense, the maximum and minimum values, as well as the median. You can continue to ask questions, like requesting the total expenses for each date. Even though it already provided us with that information as a chart, we can ask it again, and it will generate a table with the data grouped by each date. All this is done quickly and easily with the power of artificial intelligence. This is the first tool I wanted to show you. It’s a basic tool, and it’s the first step toward leveraging AI in spreadsheets. To use it, you need to link it with OpenAI, and you can find detailed instructions on how to do that in my previous video.
Now, let’s move on to a more powerful tool that allows for more advanced analysis, precise visualizations, and deeper insights. Pay attention to the second tool I’m going to explain in this video.
Akkio: Data Analysis for Professionals
Remember, if you want to learn not only how to process data with AI but also how to create content, you can download my free guide. It covers how to generate text with ChatGPT and create stunning visuals with Stable Difusión. You’ll find the link in the description.
The second tool I want to discuss is called Akkio. This tool is aimed at professionals who work with data analysis daily. It allows you to interact with your data using artificial intelligence in a more powerful way. You can try it for free, and I think it’s worth exploring even if you might consider using it later. In my opinion, it serves as a glimpse into what we can expect when Microsoft and Google incorporate AI into Google Sheets and Excel. Make sure to stay until the end of the video because I’ll talk a bit about this as well.
If we choose the free trial and register, we enter an interface like this, with various sample datasets. If we click on one of them, we can see how we can interact with the data using AI. The interface always looks the same, and when you decide to try it with your own dataset, it should follow a similar format: columns with titles that can be visualized like this.
Besides the options that don’t involve AI, there’s one particularly interesting option: chatting with the data. For example, if we look at the dataset, we can see a piece of information called “transaction time.” Using the Chat Explorer feature, we can ask questions about it. We can ask something like, “What is the average transaction time?” and the AI will respond. It’s worth noting that we can chat with the AI in Spanish without any issues. In this case, it returns the average transaction time of 11.6 seconds.
We can continue exploring the data and see how different columns relate. For example, we can see that there are two types of days: weekdays and weekends. We could ask for a graph showing the total number of transactions for each type of day. By simply asking, “Can you create a graph with the total number of transactions according to the type of day?” the AI will process the information and generate the graph. We can keep asking any questions that come to mind. We can explore different data relationships, such as the correlation between the age of the consumer and the account’s longevity. The AI will process both columns and provide us with the correlation. We can even ask follow-up questions based on the results and ask if there is a significant relationship. The AI will provide the answer based on the correlation coefficient, indicating the strength of the relationship.
As you can see, with this tool, it’s easy to generate graphs, obtain results, and even explore relationships within the dataset to gather precise information. This represents the future of these kinds of tools. In the final part of the video, I’ll briefly talk about what Google and Microsoft are doing in response to this competition and how they plan to incorporate AI into Google Sheets and Excel.
The Future of Excel and Google Sheets
Both Google and Microsoft have plans to incorporate artificial intelligence into their data analysis programs, specifically Google Sheets and Excel. I previously discussed some of the functions that will be incorporated into the new Excel, which were introduced during the presentation of Office 365’s Copilot feature. Microsoft promises not only the ability to perform data analysis similar to what we can do with Rows but also the capability for Copilot to access our document sets stored in the Office suite. Copilot will select the most relevant information from these documents to perform each task. This update should be arriving very soon.
On the other hand, Google plans to integrate similar functions into Google Sheets. They have already opened up a waitlist for users to start experimenting with these AI functions. Currently, this access through Google Labs is only available in the United States, but it indicates Google’s intention to implement these functions shortly.
But it’s not just the two giants making moves. Applications like Airtable have also opened their waitlists
