Microsoft's New Tool Lets You Chat with Your Data Charts
Soon you can click, zoom, and filter charts just by asking – no coding needed.
Imagine you're looking at a chart of sales data and you want to see just the numbers for last month. Normally, you'd have to ask someone to make a new chart. But with Flint-interactive, you can simply click or ask your AI assistant to filter the data, and the chart updates instantly. Microsoft Research built this tool to let AI agents create interactive visualizations that are as easy to use as the ones you see in fancy news articles.
The magic is that Flint-interactive understands what you're trying to do, not just the clicks. So if you select a country on a map, it can automatically highlight related text or update other charts. This takes the technical burden off developers and lets anyone with a question explore data more naturally. It's like having a data analyst in your pocket who responds to your curiosity.
You might use this in the future to build your own dashboards or to get more from AI chat tools. For example, you could ask your AI to create a chart of your expenses and then click on a category to see details. The tool is available for developers to try now, but it's not yet a mainstream product. The catch is that it requires some setup and is aimed at tech-savvy users, so it may be a while before it's built into everyday apps.
- Flint-interactive lets AI agents create charts you can click, zoom, and filter.
- It works in chat environments and dashboards, making data exploration easier.
- The tool is still in research, so it's not yet available to the general public.
Why It Matters
This could make data analysis accessible to everyone, saving time and reducing reliance on experts.