OpenAI seems to be gearing up to compete against Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint, with a new set of office agents for ChatGPT. With this feature, you will be able to create spreadsheets and presentations without needing Microsoft Office. The project was first reported by The Information, which revealed that these features are currently being tested with a small group of early users.
The goal is to allow ChatGPT users to create and edit Excel-style spreadsheets and PowerPoint-style presentations directly inside the chat interface. The output will be in .xlsx and .pptx, making the files compatible with Microsoft Office, Google Workspace, and other tools. That means no Microsoft 365 subscription will be required to work with these files.
Instead of just helping with text-based queries, ChatGPT is expected to soon allow users to press workflow buttons to start new spreadsheet or slide projects. They’ll also be able to export the work and open it in other apps if needed.
Since Microsoft has made its Office file formats open source, OpenAI can support .xlsx and .pptx natively without needing special permissions. This gives OpenAI the freedom to iterate quickly. However, it puts Microsoft and Google under more pressure, as the productivity tools remain their major business pillars.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that the tools are not ready yet. According to the report, current prototypes are missing core features like real-time collaboration, cloud storage integration, and fast performance. However, it is expected that OpenAI will overcome these limitations shortly. Besides, there’s no timeline yet for when the Office agents will roll out more broadly.
GPT-5 on the Horizon
While OpenAI is building out new productivity tools, it’s also getting ready for a major model release. GPT-5, expected this summer, will combine the power of the company’s “O” and GPT-4 models into a single, more powerful system. The new model is expected to offer improved reasoning with multimodal capabilities and more.
“We’re truly excited to not just make a new great frontier model,” said Romain Huet, OpenAI’s Head of Developer Experience. “We’re also going to unify our two series.”
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