How to Make a Chart in Power BI with AI

Manually building charts in Power BI often involves a slow process of dragging and dropping fields until your data starts to make sense. But what if you could skip the clicking and just tell Power BI what you want to see? Instead of hunting through menus, you can simply ask for the chart you need. This article will show you how to use Power BI’s built-in AI features, like the Q&A visual, to create and analyze charts with simple, conversational language.

Why Use AI for Charts in Power BI?

Before diving into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." While the traditional drag-and-drop method in Power BI is powerful, leveraging its AI tools offers some significant advantages, especially for those who aren't data analysts by trade.

Speed and Efficiency: Typing "show me revenue by country as a map" is dramatically faster than clicking to add a map visual, finding the 'revenue' field, dragging it to 'Values,' then finding the 'country' field and dragging it to 'Location.' AI lets you get straight to the insight without getting lost in the process.
Accessibility for Everyone: You don't need a deep understanding of Power BI's interface or data modeling intricacies. If you can ask a question about your business, you can build a chart. This opens up data analysis to your entire team, allowing more people to make data-informed decisions without extensive training.
Uncovering Hidden Insights: Sometimes the most revealing insights aren't obvious. AI-driven visuals like the Key Influencers chart can automatically analyze your data to find the biggest drivers behind a metric, surfacing patterns you might never have thought to look for manually.

First, a Quick Word on Preparing Your Data

AI is smart, but it's not a mind reader. The quality of its answers depends on the quality of your data's structure. Before you start building, take a moment to ensure your data is set up for success. This is the single most important step for making Power BI's AI features work for you.

Pay attention to these two areas:

Clear Column Names: Name your columns with natural, understandable language. Use "Total Revenue" instead of "tot_rev" or "Sales Rep" instead of "sls_rep_id." The AI uses these names to understand your questions, so descriptive titles are your best friend.
Correct Data Types: Make sure Power BI has correctly identified your data types. Dates should be in a date format, geographical data (like city or country) should be categorized as such, and numbers should be formatted as numbers or currency. This helps the AI know when to create a line chart (for time-series data) or a map (for geographic data).

Taking a few minutes to clean up your column names and check data types will save you a ton of frustration and lead to much more accurate and intuitive results.

How to Make a Chart with the Q&A Visual

The core of Power BI's AI chart-building capability is the Q&A visual. It essentially provides a conversational interface for your data, allowing you to ask questions and get charts back as answers. It’s the closest you’ll get to having a data analyst you can talk to directly inside your report.

Step 1: Add the Q&A Visual to Your Report

In the Power BI Desktop app, open your report. In the Visualizations pane on the right-hand side, find the Q&A icon. It looks like a speech bubble with a question mark. Click it to add the visual to your report canvas.

Step 2: Start Asking Questions

Once you add the Q&A visual, you’ll see a prompt to “Ask a question about your data.” Now you can start typing. Power BI will suggest questions based on your data columns and will try to auto-complete your phrases.

Let’s use a simple e-commerce sales dataset as an example. You could ask:

A simple question for a single number: total number of ordersPower BI will likely return a Card visual displaying the total number.
A question that requires a breakdown: total sales by product categoryThis will automatically generate a bar or column chart comparing sales across different categories.
A more specific question with a chart type in mind: show me orders over time last year as a line chartBy specifying the chart type, you have more control over the output. Power BI understands terms like "line chart," "bar chart," "pie chart," and "map."
A ranked list prompt: top 5 cities by profitThis will show you a filtered and sorted table or bar chart, giving you immediate insight into your most profitable locations.

As you type, the visual updates in real-time, allowing you to tweak and refine your question until you get exactly what you need.

Step 3: Convert Your Q&A Result into a Standard Visual

The interactive Q&A box is great for exploration, but you'll probably want to have permanent, static charts in your final dashboard. This part is incredibly easy.

Once you are happy with the chart generated by your question, look for a small icon in the top-right corner of the Q&A visual that looks like a bar chart with a checkmark. It will read "Turn this Q&A result into a standard visual" when you hover over it. Click this button, and your conversational query instantly becomes a regular Power BI visual (like a bar chart or map) that you can format, resize, and interact with just like any other chart.

This workflow is powerful: explore your data with quick questions, and once you find something interesting, "lock it in" as a permanent part of your report with a single click.

Going Beyond Chart Creation: Other AI Visuals

Power BI's AI doesn't just help you create charts, it also helps you understand them. Two powerful features that add context and explanation are Smart Narratives and the Key Influencers visual.

Add Context with Smart Narratives

A "Smart Narrative" visual automatically generates a written summary of the key takeaways from the charts on your report page. It describes trends, points out highs and lows, and puts your data into plain English.

To use it, simply add a few charts to your page (e.g., a line chart of sales over time and a pie chart of sales by region). Then, in the Visualizations pane, click the "Smart Narrative" icon. Power BI will instantly create a text box with dynamic, data-driven commentary like, "Over the last 12 months, revenue saw an upward trend, increasing by 24%. The Midwest region contributed the highest revenue at $450,000."

You can even edit this text and add your own dynamic values by asking new questions directly within the narrative. It’s an incredible way to automate the reporting commentary that usually takes a lot of time to write and update manually.

Find the "Why" with Key Influencers

Sometimes you need to know not just what happened, but why it happened. The Key Influencers visual is designed for exactly that. It analyzes your data to determine which factors have the biggest impact on a specific metric or outcome.

For example, you could use it to understand what makes a customer likely to churn. You would drag 'Churn Status' (Yes/No) to the "Analyze" field and then add potential driving factors like 'Customer Tenure', 'Product Tier', and 'Number of Support Tickets' to the "Explain by" field. The visual will then automatically generate an analysis showing you which factors have the strongest statistical influence. You might discover that customers with more than 3 support tickets are 2.5x more likely to churn - an actionable insight served up by AI, no complex statistical modeling required.

Final Thoughts

Making charts with AI in Power BI can transform your reporting workflow from a tedious, click-heavy task into a fluid conversation with your data. By using tools like the Q&A visual, you can get answers and build dashboards faster, while AI features like Smart Narratives and Key Influencers help you uncover the story hidden within your numbers.

While Power BI’s built-in tools are a great step forward, we believe the experience of getting insights from your data can be even simpler. We created Graphed because we wanted to remove every last bit of friction between asking a question and getting an answer. Instead of learning a specific BI tool's interface, you can connect sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce in seconds and just describe the dashboards you need. It’s a purely conversational experience designed to give you back your time so you can focus on growing your business, not wrestling with reports.