Microsoft 365 Copilot's Vibe Working Update Adds AI Agents To Word, Excel & PowerPoint

The rise of AI has led to new phrases to describe the ways people work with it, including the popular term 'vibe coding'. Now, Microsoft is looking to add a new phrase to the lexicon with 'vibe working' that will be the “the new pattern of work for human-agent collaboration." To that end, Microsoft is integrating AI agents into various parts of the Microsoft Office experience through Copilot 365.

Microsoft Excel has become a staple of businesses small and large, but many users are leaving some of its most powerful features on the table because they don’t know how to use them. Excel’s new Agent Mode, which the company says “speaks Excel natively,” will look to help inexperienced users unlock everything the app has to offer. The Agent Mode will be capable of evaluating and fixing issues in generated output while a user works with it.


Additionally, Word is getting an Agent Mode of its own, which will provide a conversational experience for users to get help with drafting content or refining documents that have already been written. This Agent Mode is also able to pull in data from documents used within other Office applications to create or refine a Word document, saving valuable time for users.

While PowerPoint doesn’t have its own integrated agent yet, the new Office Agent in Copilot feature will be able to give a helping hand in the meantime. Compared to AI efforts from the past, this new Agent Mode can “create tasteful, well-structured PowerPoint decks.” While creating a new deck, this Agent Mode conducts web-based research to gather information and display a preview of slides to users can see the process for themselves.

However, before letting these new AI Agents take the wheel, it’s important to stress that it’s far from perfect. The latest SpreadsheetBench shows that the new Agent Mode in Excel is only hitting about 57% accuracy. So users still need to be on top of what the AI is outputting.