Unveiling Microsoft’s Agent-Powered AI Integration: Elevating Productivity in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint

Have you heard of the concept of “vibe coding”? Microsoft is now aiming to popularize “vibe working” with its latest innovations.

In a move similar to how AI assists in coding, Microsoft is extending the idea to documents, spreadsheets, and presentations by introducing new features in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

The company defines “vibe working” as a collaborative effort between individuals and AI agents within its productivity applications. Rather than providing a single response, the updated Copilot AI tools engage in content generation, testing, and refinement in a more interactive manner, resembling a dialogue.

Recently, Microsoft announced the following enhancements:

• Agent Mode in Word and Excel: Enables Copilot to execute multi-step tasks within the applications, such as updating reports in Word or analyzing data and creating charts in Excel. PowerPoint support will be added in the future.
• Office Agent in Copilot chat: A chat-based tool designed to produce PowerPoint presentations or Word documents, starting from a basic prompt and refining the output through subsequent interactions.

Microsoft reveals that Office Agent in Copilot leverages AI models from Anthropic, the creator of the Claude AI chatbot. This move signifies Microsoft’s broader shift towards expanding beyond models from OpenAI.

Microsoft is swiftly incorporating AI functionalities to compete with Google, which is progressively integrating generative AI into its Workspace apps. Other players like Apple, OpenAI, Anthropic, Canva, Notion, among others, are also developing AI systems with agent-style capabilities for various business, productivity, and design applications.

In the fiscal year 2025, Microsoft 365 Commercial products and cloud services, including the Office apps and Copilot for businesses, generated $87.8 billion in revenue, marking a 14% increase and second only to the company’s server products and cloud services division.

The new features are currently available in preview. Agent Mode is accessible in Word and Excel on the web for Microsoft 365 Copilot users and Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscribers through the Frontier program. Desktop versions and PowerPoint support are slated for release in the near future. Office Agent is initially limited to Personal and Family users in the U.S., also through the Frontier program.