The New York Times quickly dubbed ChatGPT “the best AI chatbot ever released,” and it reached 1 million users within five days of its initial launch. By January 2023, its user base had grown to a whopping 100 million.
While AI-powered chatbots are nothing new, ChatGPT is capable of “understanding” queries and mimicking human language patterns in a way that other AI chatbots have never been able to.
Over the past several months, ChatGPT has taken the world by storm, bringing AI technology into the mainstream. This powerful chatbot has applications across a variety of industries, including changing the way that organizations use Power BI.
How Does ChatGPT Work With Power BI?
If you already use Power BI for data modeling and reporting, there are several ChatGPT use cases to help increase your productivity, data quality, and accessibility.
Think of ChatGPT as a tool to enhance the way you work in Power BI. It’s particularly helpful if you are feeling stuck on a specific problem or need some examples to spark your creativity while creating a report.
Because AI has its limitations, you’ll still need to do your due diligence and double-check ChatGPT’s outputs for accuracy. However, it has huge potential to make your workflows more efficient when used effectively. And as the technology continues to develop and improve, this potential will only grow.
Ways To Use ChatGPT and Power BI
While there are seemingly endless ways to combine the power of both ChatGPT and Power BI, below are some of the most high-value, efficiency-boosting use cases—both currently available and on the horizon.
Automate Mundane Tasks
ChatGPT is particularly helpful for automating repetitive, language-based tasks. If you find yourself re-writing and editing the same sections of your reports over and over again, ChatGPT speeds up that process.
ChatGPT is also very helpful if you’re stuck on an equation and need some support to jumpstart your progress. Say you need to write a DAX equation to calculate total yearly revenue, but you’re not totally sure how to do it. Asking ChatGPT will give you an answer to use as a starting point.
Generate More Sophisticated Reports and Visualizations
One exciting possibility for ChatGPT in the future is the ability to work not only with language but also with visual content. The latest version, GPT-4, has the ability to respond to visual input, but can’t generate images yet. However, that technology is likely on the horizon soon.
With GPT-4, users feed in Power BI reports and visuals to get immediate feedback. In the future, we might see users go directly to AI to generate new visualizations or improve on existing ones.
Elevate the NLP Processing Capabilities of Power BI
Power BI already has built-in natural language processing capabilities through the Q&A feature. However, ChatGPT’s NLP capabilities are much more sophisticated, making it a valuable companion to Power BI until Microsoft is able to improve the quality of its output.
Enable Accessibility for Non-Technical Users
Power BI is a highly technical program with many powerful and unique features. This means there’s often a steep learning curve for users without much technical knowledge.
Using ChatGPT as a virtual assistant makes Power BI’s most complex features more accessible and enhances an individual’s ability to jump in and overcome the initial barriers to getting started.
Identify Data Quality Issues
As ChatGPT’s capabilities grow, it’s possible we could see organizations using it to analyze and check data for accuracy. As the AI becomes more sophisticated, it might even be able to suggest new metrics to track and other areas for potential improvement.
Of course, you’ll still need human support to double-check the AI’s output. However, ChatGPT could provide some much-needed data redundancy.
Improve Forecasting and Predictive Analytics Capabilities
Right now, users need to build machine learning models to solve many budgeting and forecasting problems, which is often time-consuming and challenging.
As ChatGPT’s capabilities expand, it may be able to help with these problems in the future by providing more accurate forecasting and analytics.
Potential Negative Impacts of ChatGPT For Power BI Users
While ChatGPT is a very powerful tool, it’s also not an all-knowing oracle. The tool is still in its infancy, and its outputs are sometimes oversimplified or just flat-out wrong. It occasionally gets stuck on simple mathematical models as it learns.
ChatGPT may not reflect the latest Power BI updates and features. You’ll always need to do your due diligence and double-check ChatGPT’s output to ensure accuracy.
Additionally, caution is advised with the information that you put into ChatGPT. While ChatGPT does have a privacy policy, the program is still collecting and storing data somewhere. To avoid security issues in the future, avoid putting sensitive financial information and proprietary data into ChatGPT.
Does ChatGPT Make Human Expertise Irrelevant?
Despite ChatGPT’s powerful AI capabilities, it will never be able to fully replace human expertise. This is particularly true when it comes to implementing complex tools like Power BI or other advanced business intelligence platforms across your enterprise.
To get the most out of Power BI, you need an actual person who knows the tool inside and out. This is particularly important during the training and implementation phase, where you will be integrating with existing systems and setting up repeatable processes, as human interaction is key to fast, comprehensive learning.
A team of experts is also highly valuable as you continue on in your Power BI journey, helping to monitor outputs and identify more advanced use cases as your organization grows.
Collectiv offers the valuable support that you need. Our team can guide you along every step of the way, from integration to maintenance to optimization, including expert insight into how to make ChatGPT a part of your workflows.
Check out our case studies to see what we’ve helped other enterprises accomplish with Power BI.
