Introducing the Flourish Assistant and Connector

Duncan Clark
CEO, Flourish & Head of Pro Design, Canva

Anyone can take some data, throw it into an AI tool and quickly make a static chart. But to do data storytelling really well means making rich, varied, interactive, on-brand maps, charts, and other visualizations of the sort that you get from a power tool like Flourish.

But there’s a tension: power tools have rich settings panels, which adds to the learning curve. There are options and chart types that most users never find, even if they would get value from them. While more advanced users encounter some UX friction when regularly delving into advanced setting sub-panels to get the result they want.

The AI-powered features we’re unveiling today solve this tension.

The black box problem

In the last two years, AI has moved into nearly every category of data software. The pitch has been broadly consistent: less friction, faster output, fewer steps between raw data and finished insight or visualization.

But it doesn’t always feel like progress. AI tools increasingly feel like a black box. You describe what you want, something comes back — and what happened between those two moments isn’t always clear.

For a journalist, an analyst or a consultant whose work will be published and challenged, that’s a liability. The moment an AI tool can quietly alter the data your visualization is built on, you’ve lost the ability to fully vouch for your own work.

The Flourish Assistant

We spent a long time working out what responsible AI actually means in a data visualization tool. The answer we kept returning to: the AI should make you better at using Flourish — not more dependent on AI. It should speed up craft, not replace judgment. And it should always be transparent about what it did.

The Flourish Assistant, launching today, is our answer to that. It’s a plain-language editing panel built into the Flourish editor. You describe the change you want, and the Assistant makes it happen, showing you exactly what it did.

The name “Assistant” is quite intentional. With AI, what it often does is work its magic and spit out an image you can’t edit. The Flourish Assistant is designed to work through the editing environment instead. It empowers you as the author, but you no longer have to do everything manually.

Describe the change, see it happen

Here’s what that looks like in practice: every change the Assistant makes maps to a real setting in the editor — the same setting you’d find if you were clicking through the panel yourself. It tells you what it’s done, so you can go in and make any further edits you want. Every change is visible. Every change is reversible.

You can now just describe the changes you want to see in your visualization. For example, you can tell it to “make the bars blue,” “sort by value descending,” or “add a source line at the bottom” and the Assistant operates the settings panel for you, showing you what it’s changed as it goes.

For experienced users, it really accelerates the rate at which you can get to a great result — something any Flourish user will appreciate. But it also takes users who might currently be working with only a subset of the settings and gives them the empowerment and encouragement to go further. That was our twin goal: speed users up while also helping them learn.

The Flourish Connector

The second thing we’re launching today is the Flourish Connector.

A lot of the work we do with data these days starts in an AI tool. But that doesn’t mean we have to be limited to static AI-generated visualizations. The Flourish Connector enables you to start in your favorite environment — Claude or ChatGPT, for example — and generate a rich Flourish graphic in one click that you can then open in the Flourish editor to iterate and tell a story.

Unlike a “standard” AI chart, your visualizations are on-brand, accessible, responsive, and, importantly, editable. You remain the author and stay in control.

It’s the best of all worlds — the speed of AI, and an output you can actually be proud of.

Try them today

The Flourish Assistant and Connector are both live from today. You’ll find the Assistant in the editor. To try the Connector, find out how to connect your favorite AI tool such as Claue or ChatGPT.

Best of all, try both tools together: generate a chart directly from an LLM conversation, then hop into the editor and use the Assistant to take it to the next level and tell a great visual story – all the while learning as you go.

We’d love to know what you think. Where should we take this next? Tell us on social or drop us a line at hello@flourish.studio — we’re building this with our users, and your feedback will shape what comes next.