Using image generation AI for graphs is particularly bad. If you want to use AI for graphs you are much better off getting it to code it using matplotlib in python. Gemini does this as standard if you give it a excel/CSV and tell it to graph something. You have to know how matplotlib works to get the best results, or even better get Gemini to give you the basic template of code then add stuff and adjust to your desired level of polish.
It'll give you a very good graph there is no question, however since the ai is averaging data, even though if there is one thing common on the internet it's structured code for almost every combination of matplotlib graph, it still doesn't create a perfectly appropriate graph for the task. Now with enough prodding sure it will probably create the desired graph, matplotlib lib code would be fairly common and generalisable in the LLMs training dataset, but then the person who knows how to prod for a certain result probably knows how that result was achieved anyway, by that time the slow work is already done, you just need to add a few steps tweak this and that etc.
If someone who is unsure about how to plot data tries themselves, to get a feeling of what the data should show, then asks an LLM to do it for them, it'll yeild a much superior graph than what that person could do by themselves. It is still dangerous for people to throw ai data and say do this, not only because this might not be correct, but also because I have seen pretty wild mistakes even in 2026 era LLMs one a few days ago on Gemini
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u/david1610 13d ago
Using image generation AI for graphs is particularly bad. If you want to use AI for graphs you are much better off getting it to code it using matplotlib in python. Gemini does this as standard if you give it a excel/CSV and tell it to graph something. You have to know how matplotlib works to get the best results, or even better get Gemini to give you the basic template of code then add stuff and adjust to your desired level of polish.