is a NYC-based AI reporter and is currently supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism. She covers AI companies, policies, and products.
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Nine months after Google infused Gemini AI into Google Sheets, the AI system graduated from text and charts to taking on formulas. (Even those plopped into messy wedding planning spreadsheets, I found.)
Gemini’s chatbot appears on the right-hand side of Sheets. Now, when you ask how to manipulate data, Gemini will respond with suggested formulas and step-by-step instructions about how to make the formulas work — and why the formulas fail when they do. Errors will be followed up with a guide for how to correct the issue, Google says. If multiple formulas can do the same thing, Gemini will explain the options to the user.
Image: Google
Formulas, for me, often involve the pesky problem of figuring out which function I need to make it work with my data. (Is it COUNTIF or COUNTIFS, or maybe the wild card of COUNTUNIQUE?) So, I tried Gemini’s formula capability out for my wedding guest spreadsheet, a massive jumble of names, categories, email addresses, and checkboxes that my partner and I used to attempt to keep a handle on an ever-growing list of people with whom we wanted to celebrate our big day.
We got married in May, but this spreadsheet still gives me nightmares.
I expected that the math I would need to examine my guest list would be fairly straightforward, but testing Gemini’s explanation feature on this messy spreadsheet would be the test, for me, about whether it would help my daily life.
I first chose from Gemini’s suggested formulas that offered to “create a formula to count the number of guests who responded ‘Yes’ to the invitation.” Out popped a formula using the function COUNTIF in the column that I had labeled “RSVP.” (Typically, it would have taken me two or so Google searches to remember which function to use when tallying the number of items in a list that meet certain requirements.) I could insert the formula directly into my spreadsheet by clicking the button that appeared next to the formula.
I remember my wedding day as a joyous occasion full of the people that I loved most in the world — but Gemini’s answer told me that not a single person had said yes to my invite. That’s when I realized I had not actually tracked RSVPs in that column, despite the column header saying as much in the top row. Acceptances, I remembered, were tracked on the wedding website my partner and I used. I had quite literally forgotten about this website until Gemini told me that I had zero guests who RSVP’d yes to my wedding.
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