A.I. tools like ChatGPT can be used to generate data visualizations. If you are a business owner looking to transform raw data into visualized pie charts, bar graphs, and the like, A.I. can be useful.
The Five Most-Key Takeaways from This Blog Post
- Use cases include quickly putting together slide-show presentations or newsletters.
- If a hard and fast rule exists here, it is to double-check that the visualized data is accurate to what you gave it. In other words, do not take A.I.’s word (or pie chart) for it: make sure it got it right.
- The above bullet point’s hard-and-fast rule naturally supposes that your data is already clean and accurate and ready for visualization by an A.I. Garbage in, garbage out is another hard and fast rule.
- Another thing: the easier the data is for you to double-check, the better. In other words, the larger the data set, the more likely you are to have trust issues with the A.I. with respect to verifiably accurate visualizations.
- Translating across mediums, such as from text to images, is a multimodal capability that A.I. will grow in proficiency. However, users should remember to keep an eagle eye on the outputs to detect any errors.
The Significance for Business Owners
So, error detection in a data visualization is one thing. But what about error correction?
That can be tedious, as you will need to generate chart after chart until the A.I. gets it right.
Hopefully it will get your request right the first time.
An Example of Trying to Get It Right
Do note that the A.I. is at hazard the more outlandish your requests become. For instance, look at the pie chart generated below. This is the result of asking ChatGPT to take a pie chart that it accurately generated, and make the colors of the pie chart resemble a lava lamp.
Obviously it did not pull it off, and in the process it actually ruined the figures. What 1% is supposed to represent is not labeled. Also, there is a dollar sign instead of a 3. Plus, why are all of the slices of the pie different sizes if the 33% ones are all the same number?
So, you can see the issue here: requests for customization can get you varied results.
For this reason, you can either keep your requests simple or just go the Canva route and whip up something real quick the old-fashioned pre-A.I. way.
Try to include all the custom requests in your initial prompt; thinking ahead and giving one good, clear, detailed prompt can pay off well.
The Data-Knowledge Paradox: Trust Issues?
The advice above points to a paradox in using A.I. for data visualization, which is that the reason many users are using the A.I. is to help them make sense of their data sets, but A.I.’s hallucination issue requires the user to know their data set well to ensure that the A.I. did a good job.
The crux of the paradox is that you need to do what the A.I. is supposed to do for you, to make sure that the A.I. did it correctly.
As seen in the above picture, sometimes A.I. can go awry. And it may not always be as obvious, either.
Again, if you have a relatively simple request and do not want high customization, you do not have to worry so much about this paradox.
But if you do not fact-check the visualization by checking your data set, then you may get a false understanding of your own data.
The Last (But Not Least) Key Takeaway from This Blog Post
If there is an overall lesson here, it is to not ask A.I. to visualize data unless you are willing to fact check it.
Keeping the visualizations simple can help ensure that the A.I. generates a good usable visualization for you.
Other Great GO AI Blog Posts
GO AI the blog offers a combination of information about, analysis of, and editorializing on A.I. technologies of interest to business owners, with especial focus on the impact this tech will have on commerce as a whole.
On a usual week, there are multiple GO AI blog posts going out. Here are some notable recent articles:
In addition to our GO AI blog, we also have a blog that offers important updates in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), with blog posts like “Google Ends Its Plan to End Third-Party Cookies”.
