At Google Cloud Next, Looker announced a significant evolution in business intelligence (BI) with the introduction of Agentic BI, combining its analytical capabilities with Google's Agentic Data Cloud. This integration aims to redefine how businesses model, interact with, and act on their data, beginning with a deeper connection to BigQuery.
The focus of this new strategy is on delivering reliable data and actionable insights, enabling teams to innovate quickly while maintaining accuracy.
New Looker BI Agents
Looker is set to launch several new BI agents designed to facilitate dynamic interactions with data:
- Conversational Agents (Preview): Enhancements to the existing Conversational Analytics agent will improve reasoning and semantic grounding, helping to clarify data insights.
- Dashboard Agents (Preview): These agents will allow users to obtain answers directly within dashboards, enhancing the BI experience.
- Embedded Conversational Experiences (GA): Users can now integrate Conversational Analytics agents into custom applications, enabling seamless data queries.
- Agentic Workflows (Preview): New capabilities will allow agents to monitor key metrics for anomalies and provide actionable recommendations.
“At YouTube, we’re focused on helping creators succeed. We’ve been testing Conversational Analytics in Looker to give our partner managers instant, actionable data.” - Thomas Seyller, Senior Director, Technology & Insights, YouTube Business
Enhanced Self-Service Features
Looker is also making strides in self-service BI, enhancing user experience for both analysts and business users:
- Modernized Interface (Preview): A new drag-and-drop interface simplifies the creation of self-service explores.
- Visualization Assistant (GA): Users can create and refine charts using natural language commands.
- Expression Assistant (Preview): This tool allows users to generate custom dimensions and measures by describing their logic.
- Insight Assistant (Preview): Automatically generates summaries and highlights key trends in reports.
- Self-Service Explores (GA): Users can blend personal data with enterprise data while maintaining governance.
“Looker’s Self-service Explores give our users the flexibility of Excel with the governance they need.” - John Pettit, Chief Technology Officer, Promevo
A Trusted Semantic Layer
Looker emphasizes the importance of a robust semantic layer to prevent inaccuracies and ensure a single source of truth:
- Open BI and MCP (Preview): Looker introduces support for the Model Context Protocol, enhancing customer management.
- Looker Extension for VS Code (Preview): This new tool accelerates the development process, allowing for intuitive coding in LookML.
- Continuous Integration (CI/CD) (GA): This feature automates SQL validation and content testing, ensuring reliable updates.
- Knowledge Catalog Integration (Preview): Transforms metadata into a semantic graph for improved AI agent task completion.
The future of data is not just about insights but taking decisive actions. With the integration of Gemini and Looker’s semantic layer, businesses can expect a new level of data-driven decision-making.
Welcome to the era of Agentic BI.
