iiiiiiitttttttttttt

AI in Excel is the dumbest thing I've seen MS pull out and the dumbest use of AI I've ever seen. And I'm not exaggerating. Read on, cause imma fucking rant.

Excel is the about only reason business uses MS Office. Any free alternative would be just fine for word processing and slide shows. But you cannot risk your numbers and formulas being up for interpretation when they move across software packages and versions, inside or outside the company. (Not to mention broken macros for the power users.)

Can you imagine a near future where Excel is not trusted?! I'm certain you can turn if off, but still, I want to scream. They better at least come out with a GPO that disables it. If the sysadmin can't control its use, people are going to use it, purposefully or not.

There are billions of man hours and expertise in Excel, it works, it's compatible across versions, it never, ever, for fucking ever changes. That last point has been the pillar of Excel's strength from day one. On top of that all, Excel is best in class, no question, no competition.

And now MS threatens to fuck up their flagship Office product, uh, for what gain exactly? Fuck is Nadella thinking?!

"So we got this golden goose, lays eggs like there's no tomorrow. Let's risk killing it by trying to squeeze another few eggs a year. Not even sure how AI might work in this use case, but let's go for it."

It's not even a gamble in this situation. Put that shit in every Office product but Excel.

(Yes, I know, alternatives are fine for personal use and finance.)

EDIT: someguy3 pointed out that it appears one has to purposefully use it in the address bar. Still worrying that people have access, but at least it can be cut off via GPO.

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Microsoft 365 Apps > AI Features