An AI Agent Handling Utility Bills and a Claude Feature to Use ASAP

October 15, 2026

AI for Real Estate Investors.

Brandon Turner’s weekly guide to using AI for a better life through real estate investing.

Yo! Brandon here.

In this week's issue I share some tactical AI updates that you can test today (no technical experience required). Check it out below and shoot me a reply with one thing you plan to test this week!

Lets get into it...

In This Issue

A new way to use AI in Google Docs and Sheets (and how investors can use it)
The AI agent that automated utility bills to tenants (the setup is simpler than you'd think)
How AI can lead to double the pay for new employees in today's job market

This Week in AI

Claude Now Lives Inside Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides as a Sidebar You Can Actually Chat With

Anthropic just launched a public beta add-on that puts Claude inside Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides as a sidebar, available now to paid Claude subscribers (Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise). To get it, install it from the Google Workspace Marketplace through the Extensions menu inside any Doc, Sheet, or Slides file. Once it's in, Claude opens right next to your file, reads whatever you have open, sees what you've selected, and can make changes directly in the document. In Docs it can rewrite a paragraph, fix formatting, or restructure sections. In Sheets it can write formulas, build pivot tables, create charts, and clean up messy data. In Slides it can build new slides that match your existing layouts and flag anything that looks off. You stay in control through an "Ask before edits" mode where every proposed change shows up as an approval card before anything gets touched.

Before this, you could connect Google Workspace to Claude through connectors, but that workflow meant much more back and forth between Claude and your Google Workspace. Sometimes Claude would have to generate a whole new document just to deliver an edit. Now it's sitting right there with you in the file, more like an editing partner than a separate tool you ping back and forth. For real estate investors specifically, if you have an underwriting model in Google Sheets, you can open the Claude sidebar and chat right next to your formulas, ask it to fix a calculation or explain what a formula is doing, and have it make the change in place. Paste in a wall of rent roll data and ask Claude to turn it into a summary chart or a formatted dashboard, and it builds it inside the same sheet. Working on a quarterly investor update in Google Docs? Claude can format the layout, tighten the copy, and redesign sections without you ever leaving the doc. Claude had some of this through connectors before, but this streamlines functionality, especially for anyone who prefers staying inside Google's apps rather than bouncing between tabs.

Sources: Manual, 9to5google.com, venturebeat.com, techrepublic.com, tomsguide.com, openai.com, cloud.google.com, apple.com, flutter.dev, research.meta.ai, androidauthority.com, runtimewire.com

AI Proficiency Is Now a Pay Factor at a Growing Share of Employers

A quarter of US financial firms have already tied raises, promotions, and bonuses to AI proficiency, according to a survey of 500 companies by recruiting firm Selby Jennings. Robert Half's 2027 Salary Guide, drawn from over 2,000 hiring managers, found 72% of managers plan to pay more for candidates with relevant AI skills, and 42% say AI expertise commands a bigger premium than other technical skills. The average AI-focused job posting now pays around $177,000, versus $80,000 for non-AI roles. PwC's analysis of more than a billion job ads across 27 countries found a 62% wage premium advertised for AI skills. The catch, per Payscale, is that 55% of employers offer no pay bump at all for AI proficiency once someone is already on payroll. That premium is largely a hiring-market price, not a guaranteed raise for existing staff.

For the broader workforce, this is a clear directional shift. AI fluency is moving from a nice-to-have into something closer to a measurable job requirement. Only about 5% of US workers are considered genuinely AI fluent right now, which is why competition for that small pool is driving salaries up. Some employers, like Coinbase, have already moved from encouragement to consequences, firing engineers who refused AI training. Others, like Amazon, tried internal AI leaderboards and walked them back. The picture is uneven, and 94% of companies still report no significant value from AI yet per McKinsey, so this wave of proficiency pressure is outrunning the actual results. AI skill is increasingly the variable employers are pricing, even when the broader payoff for the business is still unclear.

Sources: aibusiness.vc, Manual, businessbearings.com, fortune.com, fortune.com, businessbearings.com, gbej.org, puresourcenews.com, semafor.com, YIyi Manhua, Mani Kanasani, Supreme Audiobooks

OpenAI Rolls Out "Intelligent UI"

ChatGPT just changed what an answer looks like. On October 7, OpenAI rolled out GPT-6 across all plans, paid and free, along with a new feature called Intelligent UI that lets the model decide whether your question is better answered with text, a chart, an interactive diagram, a form, or a small working tool built on the spot. Ask ChatGPT how a seven-speed bike works and you might get a labeled, tappable diagram with parts you can highlight. Ask it to plan a road trip through three cities and your stops show up pinned to a map with detour notes alongside them. Ask it to split a dinner bill and it may generate a working calculator right inside the chat. Ask how compound savings grow over time and it can build an editable calculator where you change the inputs and watch the numbers move.

The format isn't locked in. Plain text still shows up when that fits, but when a visual or interactive element would make the answer faster to use, the model picks that instead. OpenAI says answers that need a web search start coming in about 44% sooner than before, though that measures time to the first word, not total response speed. Free users get GPT-6 Luna and the full Intelligent UI feature. Paid plans (Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise) run on GPT-6 Sol. One real caveat. If you're on Pro with extended deep-reasoning mode switched on, Intelligent UI is disabled while that mode is active. One or the other, not both. For everyday use, though, this is a meaningful shift. Asking a complex question used to mean reading through a wall of text and building your own mental model. Now the model does more of that assembly work for you, in a format you can actually interact with.

Sources: toolpilotpro.com, OpenAI, community.openai.com, theverge.com, mediarelease.co, dev48.org, mefmobile.org, dev.to, meaniings.com, frontendatlas.com, stacktrick.com, explainx.ai

From Our Desk

BetterLife Real Estate Funding

43 Rental Property Portfolio Refinanced in 40 Days.

Chad and Brittany owned 43 single-family rentals with significant equity. They wanted to put that equity toward a larger investment outside the single-family rental space. But getting 43 properties through refinancing meant coordinating loan payoffs, appraisals, title, and insurance. And they needed to move quickly.

BetterLife REF collected the property information upfront and built a separate file for each rental. Two appraisers split the workload, while the team coordinated with title, insurance providers, and the previous lender. Chad stayed involved so questions and payoff requests kept moving.

All 43 properties closed in about 40 days, giving Chad and Brittany access to equity for their next investment. A big portfolio comes with plenty of moving parts. If you’re planning a portfolio refinance, talk with BetterLife REF about what it would take to get yours across the finish line.

Exploring a refinance?

Learn More About BetterLife REF →

My AI Rabbit Hole

How I’m Using AI This Week

It may not always be about real estate investing — every week I share the AI rabbit hole I’m personally going down.

I used Claude Artifacts to replace my clunky property management reports with a custom dashboard that updates automatically and shows me only what actually matters.

Create Real Time Dashboards With Artifacts

▶ Watch the walkthrough (4 min) · opens in Loom

Case Study

Automated Tenant Utility Billing Saves 45 Minutes a Month and Gets Invoices Out on Time

Submitted by Matt Buck (@mattbuckrei)

What it does

I built an AI agent with Grokbot that handles my monthly tenant utility billing. It logs into my utility tracker, my electric and water provider portals, and my submetering app, pulls the bills and each unit's electricity usage, and enters all the inputs into a Google Sheet I already had set up with the formulas for calculating charges. Then it messages me with each tenant's total and screenshots of the spreadsheet, the utility bills, and the submeter readings so I can verify everything. I just review the amounts and enter the charges into my tenant portal.

The problem

My submeters tell me how much electricity each unit uses, but I still had to figure out what each tenant owed. Every month I was logging into multiple portals, downloading bills, collecting usage data, and entering the numbers into a spreadsheet by hand. I calculated electricity charges using my submetering formula and split the water bill using a separate allocation method. The whole thing took 30 to 45 minutes. And because it was manual, I'd sometimes forget about it or struggle to find the time, and I wouldn't submit the bills to tenants until the 6th or 7th. That pushed invoicing back and delayed getting paid.

How I built it

I used Grokbot's screen-recording feature to teach it the process. It records my screen while I walk through a task once, then turns that recording into a repeatable skill I can schedule. Grokbot also runs on its own cloud computer, so it keeps going even when my computer is off, using a live browser to log into websites and navigate pages the same way I would.

I started with my Google Sheet, which already had the formulas for calculating each unit's electricity charges and allocating the water bill. Then I recorded myself logging into each portal, downloading the bills, collecting each unit's usage, entering the inputs into the sheet, and checking the amounts. I had Grokbot turn that recording into a recurring skill and scheduled it to run on the 1st of each month. Then I instructed it to message me with each tenant's total plus screenshots of the spreadsheet, the utility bills, and the submeter readings.

The result

On the 1st of each month, I get a message with what each tenant owes and the screenshots to verify it. This has been running for several months and saves me 30 to 45 minutes of manual work every month. Beyond the time, it fixed the consistency problem. When I was doing this by hand, I'd often not get bills out until the 6th or 7th. Now the calculations are ready at the start of the month and I can send invoices earlier and actually on time, which means I get paid sooner.

Are you using AI in your business? We want to hear about it. Tell us more here.

Prompt of the Week

Steal this one. Paste it into ChatGPT or Claude and make it yours:

The Prompt

“Act as an operations analyst for my business or real estate portfolio. Help me uncover recurring problems I’ve gotten used to that are quietly costing me money, time, or missed revenue. Start by asking me five specific questions about how I collect payments, manage expenses, handle recurring tasks, and follow up on opportunities. Based on my answers, identify the three most promising areas to investigate and tell me what records or examples would help you verify each one. Look for things like missed utility reimbursements, unused subscriptions, delayed invoices, repeated manual work, and leads that never get a follow-up. Separate confirmed findings from suspicions, and don’t invent numbers or assume every expense should be cut. For each finding, estimate the monthly and annual impact using the information I provide, show your calculation, and suggest the simplest fix. Finish by recommending one action I can take this week, based on the likely benefit and effort required.”

If you've read this far, do me a favor and hit the REPLY button and send me a quick note on what stood out to you. We actually read these, and it helps us improve future newsletters.

To a better life,

Brandon Turner • BetterLife Real Estate Funding

P.S. Looking to scale up a real estate business and achieve financial freedom? I’m hosting a LIVE workshop this Saturday about real estate investing. Register here →