Another Crazy Day in AI: What Vibe Working Means for Office Users
- Wowza Team
- Sep 30
- 4 min read
Hello, AI Enthusiasts.
Tuesday’s wrapping up, but the AI drops aren’t done.
Microsoft is shaking up Copilot in 365 with something it calls Agent Mode. Instead of just spitting out drafts, it can now help plan, review, and refine projects—turning your usual office apps into something closer to a thought partner.
On the flip side, one tech thinker warns that surveillance-heavy responses to AI “workslop” are draining productivity. His take: Work cultures that make authenticity the path of least resistance.
Meanwhile, ServiceNow’s new AI Experience is pitching itself as the single front door for workflows, data, and automation.
Here's another crazy day in AI:
Conversational features come to MS Office Apps
Workslop vs. real work
ServiceNow launches AI Experience
Some AI tools to try out
TODAY'S FEATURED ITEM: Microsoft Introduces Vibe Working to Office
Image Credit: Wowza (created with Ideogram)
Have you ever wished you could just tell your spreadsheet what you need and have it figure out the rest?
Microsoft’s latest announcement introduces Agent Mode in Excel and Word, along with a new Office Agent in Copilot chat. The update, detailed by Sumit Chauhan, Corporate Vice President of the Office Product Group at Microsoft, builds on the idea of “vibe working.” The concept draws from recent advances in reasoning models, designed to make productivity tools feel more interactive and iterative. Now, that same approach is coming to everyday productivity tasks. Instead of manually constructing every formula or formatting every paragraph, you describe what you want, and Copilot handles the technical execution while you guide the direction.
Here's what these updates actually do:
Agent Mode in Excel leverages OpenAI's reasoning models to handle spreadsheet work that typically needs advanced skills—it picks appropriate formulas, creates new sheets, builds data visualizations, and checks its own work, achieving 57.2% accuracy on SpreadsheetBench evaluation tasks
Agent Mode in Word turns writing into a collaborative process where you explain what you need and Copilot drafts content, applies formatting, and asks questions when it needs more information about your intentions
Office Agent in Copilot chat creates PowerPoint decks and Word documents directly from conversational prompts by asking clarifying questions, researching information online, showing its reasoning process, and generating finished files
Available through the Frontier program for Microsoft 365 Copilot customers and Personal/Family subscribers, with Agent Mode working in web versions of Excel and Word first (desktop coming later) and Office Agent currently limited to users in the United States
Designed for back-and-forth interaction so you can continuously refine what gets produced rather than accepting whatever comes out the first time
Excel has always occupied an interesting position in workplace software. It's powerful enough to run financial operations for major corporations, but it's also approachable enough that people use it for grocery lists and fantasy football leagues. The challenge has always been the gap between those two extremes—accessing the sophisticated features requires knowledge that most people don't have time to develop. Agent Mode tries to narrow that gap by letting users describe outcomes instead of memorizing functions. Need a budget tracker with conditional formatting? A loan amortization schedule? An analysis of sales trends? The idea is to explain what you're after and let the software figure out how to build it.
Whether this works well in practice depends on several factors that are hard to predict from an announcement. The 57.2% benchmark accuracy suggests the technology handles many common tasks but still has limitations. More importantly, benchmarks don't always reflect the messy reality of actual work—ambiguous requirements, incomplete data, company-specific conventions, or situations where you're not entirely sure what you need until you see a first attempt. The iterative design might help with some of these challenges, though it also means users need to be comfortable with a process that involves more conversation and refinement than traditional software use.
There's also a practical question about what happens to the learning curve. If you can get results without understanding the underlying mechanics, that's convenient for immediate needs but potentially limiting for developing deeper capabilities. On the other hand, if these tools work as intended, they might actually serve as informal teaching aids—showing you what formulas or structures accomplish specific goals, which could help build understanding over time. How this plays out will probably vary by person and situation. The features are rolling out now, so we'll likely start seeing real-world feedback about what works, what doesn't, and which types of tasks benefit most from this approach to productivity software.
Read the full article here.
OTHER INTERESTING AI HIGHLIGHTS:
Workslop vs. Real Work
/Carlos E. Perez, Editor of Intuition Machine, on Medium
Carlos E. Perez argues that companies often fight “workslop”—AI-generated but useless work—with surveillance and compliance, but this creates an arms race that drains productivity. Instead, he suggests designing workplaces where genuine contributions naturally outperform fake ones. By valuing context, encouraging open thinking, and making the cost of low-quality work visible to its creator, organizations can shift toward a reputation economy of authentic contribution. In this ecology, AI becomes a tool to enhance real thinking rather than a shortcut for empty productivity.
Read more here.
ServiceNow Launches AI Experience
/ServiceNow
ServiceNow has introduced AI Experience, a new multimodal interface that serves as the unified entry point for enterprise AI. The platform brings together people, data, and workflows with built-in governance, security, and transparency. By extending across ServiceNow CRM and other workflows, AI Experience transforms how employees interact with AI, enabling voice and web agents, data exploration, and automation to drive revenue and customer loyalty. Positioned as the new UI for enterprise, it puts AI directly in the flow of work.
Read more here.
SOME AI TOOLS TO TRY OUT:
That’s a wrap on today’s Almost Daily craziness.
Catch us almost every day—almost! 😉
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