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How to Analyze Excel Files with AI: A Beginner's Guide

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Introduction Excel is useful for organizing data, but analyzing a large spreadsheet can be difficult for beginners. AI can help summarize data, perform calculations, find patterns, and create charts. You can upload an Excel file to some AI tools or work with AI directly in Excel.  What Can AI Do With an Excel File? AI can do more than simply read an Excel file. It can help you understand and work with your data using simple questions. AI can help you: Summarize data and explain the main information. Calculate numbers such as totals, averages, and percentages. Compare data between products, regions, or time periods. Find patterns or unusual values that may need further checking. Create tables and charts from your data. AI can help you explore spreadsheet data, but its answers should be checked against the original file, especially when calculations affect important decisions. What You Need Before Starting Before you start, prepare an Excel (.xlsx) file and an AI tool that suppo...

What Is Microsoft's New Copilot? Home, Code and Autopilot Explained

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  Introduction Microsoft introduced a new Copilot experience on September 25, 2026, bringing together three capabilities: Home, Code, and Autopilot. In this beginner's guide, you'll learn what each feature does, how the new Copilot differs from a traditional AI chatbot, and what to know about its availability and potential costs. What Is the New Microsoft Copilot? The new Microsoft Copilot brings AI assistance, app creation, and task automation into one work experience. Instead of using AI only to ask questions or create drafts, users can also build tools with Code and delegate more complex tasks to AI through features such as Cowork and Autopilot. What Is Copilot Home? Copilot Home is the main place to start using the new Microsoft Copilot. It brings Chat and Cowork together and connects Copilot with Microsoft 365 apps such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint . Chat and Cowork in One Place Chat is designed for quick tasks, such as asking questions, finding information, or creatin...

How to Use AI to Analyze a PDF: A Beginner's Guide

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AI can help you summarize PDF documents, find specific information, and understand difficult sections without reading every page yourself. In this beginner's guide, you'll learn how to upload a PDF, ask useful questions, analyze tables and charts, and check AI answers against the original document. You'll also learn how to protect sensitive information when using AI tools. Which AI Tools Can Analyze PDFs? Several AI tools offer PDF analysis features. Depending on the tool and your plan, you may be able to summarize documents, ask questions, or find important information. However, available features, file upload limits, and usage limits can vary by service and subscription plan . Some features may also change over time. ChatGPT ChatGPT can help analyze PDF files when file uploads are available for your account. Depending on your plan and current limits, you may be able to summarize a document, find specific information, explain difficult sections, or work with information in...

What Is AI Inference?

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  AI inference is the process of using a trained AI model to produce a result from new input. During training, an AI model learns patterns from data. After training, the model can process new input and produce a result. This is called inference. In simple terms, training builds the model, while inference uses the trained model . How Does AI Inference Work? AI inference follows a simple process: Input → Preprocessing → Model → Computation → Output Each step helps the AI turn new data into a useful result. 1. Input First, the AI receives new data. The input can be different types of data, such as: Text Images Audio Video For example, when you ask an AI chatbot a question, your question is the input. An image recognition system may receive a photo as its input. 2. Preprocessing The raw input usually needs to be prepared before the AI model can process it. This step is called preprocessing . Depending on the type of data, preprocessing may include resizing an image, preparing text, or ...

What Is AI Evaluation? How Do We Measure AI Performance?

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  Introduction AI systems are becoming more capable, but how do we know how well they actually perform? The answer is AI evaluation . AI evaluation uses tests, tasks, and other methods to measure specific aspects of an AI system. Different evaluation methods help researchers understand what an AI system can do, where it struggles, and how reliable its results are. What Is AI Evaluation? AI evaluation is the process of measuring an AI system's performance against a specific goal or task. For example, an evaluation may measure whether an AI can: Give correct answers Complete a task Follow instructions Produce useful results Meet specific safety requirements What Is an AI Benchmark? Figure 1. Different AI models complete the same set of tasks and produce different results. An AI benchmark is a standardized set of tasks used to measure and compare AI systems . Researchers can give the same tasks to different models and compare the results. Benchmarks can focus on areas such as: Mathema...