- Microsoft launches new AI agents to power the future of “vibe working”
- Agent Mode and Office Agent will do your hard work for you
- Only US users get Office Agent from launch
Inspired by vibe coding (where AI generates the code and developers finetune it), Microsoft has lifted the wraps of what it is calling “vibe working” for Office apps.
The tech giant has brought a brand-new Agent Mode to Excel and Word to help office workers boost and speed up output, as well as a dedicated Office Agent for Copilot Chat, which will come later to PowerPoint, Word and Excel.
With the new agents, users can turn prompts into “high-quality… documents, spreadsheets and presentations.”
Microsoft is giving Office users new AI agents to work with
Starting with Excel, Microsoft is adding GPT-5 reasoning models to break down complex spreadsheet tasks step-by-step. The company acknowledged that the software’s most powerful features are only available to expert users, but with Agent Mode, users can generate outputs, evaluate results and fix issues.
In the example given on the company’s blog post, we see Agent Mode deciding formulas, producing new sheets and creating data visualizations from a simple prompt.
Agent Mode for Word drafts and refines work, clarifying details and applying polished formatting to create the ultimate finished piece from user prompts, making it the highlight of vibe working.
It’s not just beneficial for working, though, because it also acts as a writer’s subeditor: “Can you clean up this document? Title case for section headers, branding updates per the ‘/Latest brand guidelines’ email, and italicize all external partner mentions,” the example prompt reads.
The second part of Microsoft’s announcement, Office Agent in Copilot chat, takes a newer approach to AI tools. Instead of using GPT models, as it has done previously, Microsoft is starting to use alternative models. This feature works with Anthropic’s Claude models.
Office Agent will complete the whole process, right from conducting deep research to producing usable content.
Agent Mode for Word and Excel on the web are rolling out via the Frontier program now, with desktop support coming “soon.”
Office Agent is also rolling out, but only in the US and for web apps.
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