Advancing Spark - The Rise of GenBI with Databricks AI/BI and Genie

Generative BI - definitely sounds like a new hype term that will be bandied around at every opportunity, but what does it actually mean? If we're looking at a new wave of Gen-AI driven BI tools, how does this change how people interactive with data?
In this video Simon takes a look at the new AI/BI product from Databricks, specifically the fairly magical Genie - giving users a ChatGPT-like interface directly over the data within Unity Catalog. Taking this, not as a direct replacement for dashboards, but as another tool for specific scenarios and personas, just how profound an impact are tools like this going to have on BI as a whole?
For more info around AI/BI - check out the docs here: docs.databricks.com/en/ai-bi/...

[@jandrees8190]

Sold on GenBI 🙂

[@prasun12377]

Looks promising, do they provide any sort of APIs to integrate with external tools?

[@AdvancingAnalytics]

Hrm, good question, haven't looked to see if we can call it externally. I'll keep an eye out - expect a video if it's possible!

[@Milhouse77BS]

Microsoft Q & A never really caught on. We'll see how this does.

[@AdvancingAnalytics]

Yeah, but Q&A you had to be very precise with your language - to the point of having to know the data model and a specific way of phrasing questions. Lots of people tried it and didn't get on with it because it didn't feel natural, or had hidden expected knowledge. This definitely feels a lot more open and engaging - but the showing of SQL etc might still put some people off. It's a big step closer, so I'm excited to see if it grabs people more than Q&A - Simon

[@pesetskyps]

Impressive, databricks is missing one piece to nail it, they need the semantic model on top of tables, same as data source in power bi. Then it can fly

[@AdvancingAnalytics]

During the Data + AI Summit they announced "Metrics" - reusable business level calculations stored in Unity Catalog. We don't have much to share on it right now, but could well be a step towards filling in that gap, if they get it right!

[@brads2041]

If data literacy is no longer necessary, who validates an answer from the AI?

[@AdvancingAnalytics]

Oof, don't get me wrong, Data Literacy is still INCREDIBLY important - this just helps us to move the technical barrier for some, and increase self-reliance for others. Certainly interesting questions come up around how we test/monitor accuracy in these systems over time, going to be an exciting time as companies wrangle with these problems!

[@Milhouse77BS]

Oh, I thought this was medallion one, but they should be good too because I’m not impressed with what I saw in “duhbricks”demo the other week