A.I. in Google Sheets

I’ve been less than excited when it comes to all the A.I. hype. But, I’ve dabbled. And when I saw Coefficient release a Google Sheets extension with the ability to use OpenAI’s GPT model in a spreadsheet, I was…curious.

I’ve played with it a good bit, and have some thoughts.

Here’s a quick 2.5 minute video on a few of the functions; give it a watch and a like if you can spare a couple minutes:

In a Nutshell

You’ve got to know what you’re doing.

This sums up my thoughts pretty well.

A.I. has some really useful benefits as a helper, but it’s not going to do everything for us. Nor do I want it to.

And it can be a downright nuisance if you don’t pay attention to what and how you ask it do things.

What it Does

The GPT Copilot extension lets you use several built in functions like GPTX(prompt) and GPTX_CODE(task, language) directly in your spreadsheet just like any of the other built in functions.

So, we can get random data points, lists, tables, summaries, tags, etc. You can translate from one language to another and summarize a given input.

I put it to use in a simple project linked in the video above.

In my sample project, the most useful features were

1. Generating dummy table data GPTX(prompt)

2. Editing the data by extracting or adding to it GPTX_SUMMARIZE(text, [format]) & GPTX_EDIT(text, [task])

3. Generating code in a specified language: GPTX_CODE(task, language)

It’s far from perfect, and at this stage, I’m not sure how much time it will save in most basic tasks.

Included are the abilities to build formulas from prompts in case you don’t know the ins and outs of the built in Google Sheets formulas. And also a pivot table and chart builder tool to be used in the same way.

What do you think? Revolutionary or overhyped?

Have a great one!

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👋 My name is Eamonn, and I love Google Sheets & Workspace. If you'd like more tips like this, subscribe to me on YouTube and join the conversation on LinkedIn.

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