Microsoft adds AI tools to Office apps like Outlook, Word

including Word, Excel and Outlook emails...

Oh no! Tell them to stop! I'm recently getting a voice in my Android Outlook client asking if I want my emails read out. Twice I said yes, and twice it was a total and annoying waste of time. The first time it quickly responded: "I can't read the email because it appears to be in a foreign language." Duh. The app is so "intelligent" it doesn't know I live outside an English speaking country.

The second time, it tried to read out the spam messages at the top on my inbox list, so I had to stop the app as it was spouting noise pollution. MS still needs to perfect its core apps before it goes ahead with AI.

Remember Clippy or "Mixed Reality"? What a joke.

Microsoft is infusing artificial intelligence tools into its Office software, including Word, Excel and Outlook emails.

The middle age office worker who counts as her day's task making Excel schedules and plans is going to be made redundant?

The announcement came two days after OpenAI, which powers the generative AI technology Microsoft is relying on, rolled out its latest artificial intelligence model, GPT-4.

LLMs that are being crowd-sourced, openly shared and recursively self-improving or hosted on one or more computers could be even more paradigm-changing.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/you-can-now-run-a-gpt-3-level-ai-model-on-your-laptop-phone-and-raspberry-pi/

It would be great if they could focus on making sure the basic functions of Office softwares actually work instead of adding AI to something that doesn’t have I.

It would be great if they could focus on making sure the basic functions of Office softwares actually work instead of adding AI to something that doesn’t have I.

Libre Office is your friend, open source so nothing to buy, no annual fee. Anything you do on Libre Office opens on Macroshaft Orifice and vice versa.

focus on making sure the basic functions

Yes, sure, but that’s not anymore the world we currently live in. It’s nowadays preferred everywhere what I would call a massive function overload. And while formerly those basic functions worked well, nowadays none of the basic and of the many more functions even only nearly work at all. That disaster can be observed everywhere, it’s by far not unique to IT or Microsoft software.

I still prefer the basic functions of Google Docs and Spreadsheets.

Anything you do on Libre Office opens on Macroshaft Orifice and vice versa.

By far not. I have a lot of office files with macro applications , also from third parties so that I can’t edit or transfer them. And believe me , they only run under MS office, some require even a specific version and again others require even everything run still under 32-bit OS.

I need MS Office because all my clients use it all the time. Often I need the advanced editing functions like "track changes."

The documents usually go through several people. If someone at one stage has made changes using Libre or Docs, the formatting tends to go wonky, especially on spreadsheets, and other team members get really peeved off.

Gotta stick with MS Office, like it or not.

Yes, sure, but that’s not anymore the world we currently live in. It’s nowadays preferred everywhere what I would call a massive function overload. And while formerly those basic functions worked well, nowadays none of the basic and of the many more functions even only nearly work at all. That disaster can be observed everywhere, it’s by far not unique to IT or Microsoft software.

This; everything is feature creep and half the features never work well.

Websites weren't anywhere near as buggy and poorly made 10-15 years ago. Apps from major companies are routinely junk too.