10X AI (Issue #22): Canva Magic, AI Spreadsheets, and a Broken Breakdancer

PLUS: More Google Bard, LinkedIn AI, Zoom Docs, Arc Browser's Max, and using Bing's image recognition to mimic image styles without artist names.

Happy Sunday, friends!

Welcome back to 10X AI: a weekly look at beginner-focused AI news, tools, and tips.

Let’s get to it.

This long post might get cut off in some email clients. Click here to read it online.

🗞️ AI news

Here are this week’s AI developments.

1. Canva’s major Magic Studio rollout

I guess it was only a matter of time.

With Adobe and Figma introducing AI, it was inevitable that Canva would make its move eventually.

And make a move it did: Say hello to Magic Studio.

What’s that?

Why yes! There is a catchy upbeat track to accompany the launch. How’d you know?

Magic Studio lets you use AI to do just about anything:

• Generate new images and videos (through a partnership with Runway)

• Design presentations and rich media

• Edit pictures in multiple ways

• Write copy

• …and more

Head to Magic Studio to check it out, but note that AI features are quite limited for free Canva accounts.

2. Google Bard Things

We’ve also had two announcements of upcoming releases from Google.

1. The Google Assistant is about to become Assistant with Bard. It will be a smarter assistant that performs actions on your behalf and understands voice, text, and image input. It’s in early testing now and should roll out to the public over the next few months.

2. Bard will get “Memory,” which is a feature that lets you share a few details about yourself that Bard remembers across conversations. If that sounds suspiciously familiar, that’s because it’s essentially a clone of “Custom Instructions” that ChatGPT’s had since July.

3. LinkedIn AI features

LinkedIn has also announced a number of AI features aimed primarily at recruiters and leaders. LinkedIn AI will help companies find qualified candidates faster, develop employee skills through AI coaching, and assist marketing teams in reaching B2B audiences.

4. Zoom Docs

Zoom has announced Zoom Docs, which is an all-in-one place to collaborate on files, manage tasks, etc.—all with a little help from AI.

The big selling point seems to be that Zoom Docs live natively in the platform, so you don’t have to switch browser windows while on a Zoom call to collaborate on notes and documents.

Zoom Docs will also be an anchor point for the recently released Zoom AI Companion. That’s a whole lot of “Zoom.”

5. Arc browser gets “Max”

The Arc browser just announced Max, an AI suite of five neat features, efficiently demoed in this 18-second video:

Max automatically gives your tabs and downloads appropriate names, lets you access ChatGPT more quickly, and answers questions about any on-page content.

Arc is Mac-only for now, but the Windows version is expected this winter. (I’m on the waitlist myself.)

🛠️ AI tools

Today I have a selection of AI tools that work inside Google Sheets (or Excel) to help you with categorization, formulas, and more.

I won’t be surprised if these standalone apps become less relevant once Bard is fully integrated into Google’s ecosystem. But for now, if you want to bring the power of AI into your spreadsheets, here are a few sites you can use.

6. SheetGPT

SheetGPT brings ChatGPT directly into your Google Sheets, with a focus on letting you:

• Research and generate new content

• Organize existing content

• Summarize, clean, and categorize text data

Here’s a demo:

It’s completely free for the first 100,000 words of input/output.

7. Excel Formula Bot

As the name suggests, Excel Formula Bot is focused less on content categorization and more on formulas, VBA code, and other mathy stuff.

But as the name does not suggest, the tool also works for Google Sheets.

No more having to memorize the right formula syntax. Simply describe what you need to Excel Formula Bot and let it write the formulas for you. (Then pray it doesn’t hallucinate and mess it all up.)

There’s a Free tier that lets you test out the tool.

8. Spreadsheet AI

Unlike the first two, more specialized sites, Spreadsheet AI is more of a jack-of-all-trades. It can create entire tables from scratch, categorize and edit content, and take care of math formulas in Google Sheets.

Here:

There’s a free plan that can handle up to 1,500 rows per workbook, which should be plenty for testing purposes.

💡 AI tip

Here’s this week’s tip.

9. Mimic styles without relying on artists’ names

For ethical and legal reasons, text-to-image models are slowly moving toward relying less on artist names as explicit prompt modifiers. In fact, DALL-E 3 has outright banned the use of living artists’ names in your prompts.

But if you like a particular drawing or painting style, you can always get a little help from Bing by simply asking it to recreate the image in question.

To demonstrate this, let’s first ask Midjourney for a bike in the style of Picasso. (No, Picasso is not a living artist and would have been fine to use directly, but bear with me here):

Then, we go to Bing and use its image recognition to upload the above image, with the following simple prompt:

Bing—powered by DALL-E 3—gets to work and soon generates the following grid of bikes, along with the prompt it used:

Sure, none of the resulting images are 100% accurate replicas of the original. But the general direction is not too far off.

Even more importantly, you now have a few artist-agnostic style descriptors to try and build further on: “abstract painting" and “cubist style.”

See if this helps you get closer to the style of an image you like!

🤦‍♂️ 10. AI fail of the week

Who knew breakdancing could get so literal?

Sunday poll time

Know of other text-to-video tools that aren’t on the list?

Would love to learn about them, so let me know in the comments!

---

Previous issue of 10X AI: