Microsoft Is Trying To Make 'vibe Working' A Thing

Microsoft is taking inspiration from nan AI-driven workflows of "vibe coding" and has now group retired to make "vibe working" a point (yes, those are nan words nan institution chose.) Does AI successful nan workplace even lead to worthwhile outputs? Does it mortgage our brains' expertise to learn? There are galore seemingly captious mobility unanswered. But successful nan meantime, sure: vibe moving it is.

Using Office Agent wrong Office apps aliases Copilot chat, users tin statesman a archive pinch a azygous punctual and past activity iteratively alongside Copilot to create a vanished product. Microsoft says this is nan "new shape of activity for human-agent collaboration." The Agent Mode instrumentality supports Excel and Word workflows, and Microsoft says PowerPoint support is coming soon; Office Agent useful pinch PowerPoint and Word, pinch Excel coming soon.

The institution waxes poetic astir nan "full powerfulness of Excel" being disposable only to master users and promises that an Agent Mode that tin "speak Excel" will alteration each that. In information shared arsenic portion of nan announcement, Microsoft said that Copilot Agent Mode successful Excel achieved 57.2 percent accuracy connected nan SpreadsheetBench benchmark. This is compared to a 71.3 percent quality score, though it's not clear if that's for mean users, Excel powerfulness users aliases really galore quality users that people is derived from. Still — not awesome numbers!

Agent Mode besides useful successful Word to summarize, edit and of people thief to create full drafts (though its unclear what those comparative accuracy rates are.) Both nan Excel and Word Agent Modes are powered by OpenAI's latest models. Office Agent successful Copilot chat is powered by Anthropic models and tin create PowerPoint presentations and Word documents successful what Microsoft calls a "chat-first experience."

Agent Mode for Excel and Word, arsenic good arsenic Office Agent, are disposable coming done nan Frontier program. Agent Mode is presently constricted to nan web-based versions of Word and Excel and is coming to desktop soon.