We recently learned that Copilot in Microsoft Excel got a big upgrade in the form of context awareness, which is in addition to the formula generation capabilities that were made available earlier. However, no firm has really won the AI race yet, and Google has now edged ahead in at least one domain today, by adding Gemini text generation capabilities in Google Sheets.
In a blog post, Google has announced that while you can already leverage Gemini in Sheets to generate charts and insights, you can now generate text using its new AI function too. This function can utilize a natural language prompt and an optional context window to summarize and generate text, categorize information, and perform sentiment analysis.
The syntax for the AI function is fairly straightforward:
AI("prompt",[optional range]) So you can invoke the Gemini function as follows:
=AI("Perform sentiment analysis on the emails sent by the customers to the barbershop.", C2) Or:
=AI("Create an email to the reviewer addressing specific items in their reviews.", A2:G2) It is very interesting to note that a similar capability is not offered by Copilot in Excel yet. In my testing, I did get Copilot to generate charts, formulas, and do some text formatting, it simply doesn"t seem to have the ability to actually generate textual data directly in a workbook just yet.
While an input range isn"t mandatory, Google recommends using it for the best results. Just like any cell using a formula, you can refresh the AI cell, and get an indicator about its sync state. That said, a limitation that is present with regards to the AI function is that it only works for the first 200 selected cells in your range. Once that generation completes, you can select more cells and repeat the process, which is a slightly cumbersome experience.
The rollout for this capability has begun across Business, Enterprise, Education, Education Premium, AI Pro, and Ultra plans, so it should be available to everyone sooner rather than later. In the meantime, you can view details about the AI function here.