Comment by russellbeattie
10 days ago
Since when has Microsoft had a hit product before version 3? It's simply not in their corporate DNA.
Besides, I just recently saw a review of the newest Copilot for Excel by a serious spreadsheet jockey, and he was truly blown away. Basically, it knows everything Excel can do, how to do it, and it now truly understands numbers as numbers and when to use formulas, etc. etc. Basically, it went from smart automation to full on AI.
If Microsoft doesn't fall for short term thinking, the product will eventually succeed.
Could have been leveraging the new Agen Mode in Excel preview released as a Labs feature. Built on Claude and not GPT-5, this is what the MS teams behind apps like Excel, PowerPoint etc. are now doubling down on.
Possibly the Office Agent can become a V2 of what M365 Copilot was originally sold as. It's not at all surprising that it takes a few years to figure out what LLMs can really be used for in Office tools. Whereas asking for businesses to fund all these experiments with a $30pupm license is not the best move to create early adoption and fans...