I’m placing a bold bet: Microsoft Office, the long-standing backbone of workplaces, is on its way out. By 2027, Microsoft will transform Office into a Copilot-centered AI platform that absorbs its core functions. By 2035 at the latest, the classic suite will be retired entirely.
This shift isn’t just Microsoft moving away from its historical knowledge-worker apps—it’s a race to define the tools workers need in an AI-forward world. In this future, people won’t spend their days creating most of their content; instead, they’ll oversee and direct AIs.
I imagine this future playing out on an AI Work Surface: not productivity apps you toil inside, but a layer where AI highlights the actions you need to take, provides visibility into ongoing work, and assists in completing it. Gone is Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and maybe even Teams.
Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Claude are already giving us glimpses of this future, chipping away at Microsoft’s productivity empire with not only writing interfaces, but also data analysis and other functions Office once owned. And now Elon Musk has announced Macrohard, aimed squarely at disrupting Microsoft’s dominance with an AI-first vision.
In this week’s edition, we’ll cover both shifts—and share the latest updates to ChatGPT. But first, some news from us at Stellis AI.
I’m thrilled to welcome four new members to the Stellis AI Advisory team! As AI transforms work and more of you ask for support—from AI strategy to implementation—we’re expanding to deliver. Please welcome Chalam, Lou, Brett, and Lia, who bring fresh expertise to guide your AI journey.
AI should be paying off. If you’re seeing the opposite—unclear strategy, no leadership alignment, frustrated staff—drop us a note. One day is all it takes to change that.
When AI can handle 60% or more of a knowledge worker’s job—and agents cover much of the rest—we stop being content producers and become managers of AIs. Our tools will need to shift to support that role, putting greater emphasis on monitoring, managing exceptions, and orchestrating work done by others.
For example:
Even Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, acknowledged this, In an interview, he asked: “Why do I need Excel?” and outlined a vision for how Copilot subsumes much of today’s day-to-day functionality. He’s just hoping they get there first to keep their $70 billion cash cow.
The future of work isn’t a stack of disconnected apps—it’s an AI Work Surface. Instead of producing every piece of content ourselves, we’ll manage a network of AI agents that carry out most of the work. Our role shifts to managing by exception: AIs handle tasks end-to-end and alert us only when human judgment is needed.
This surface becomes the single pane of glass for work. It gives leaders and teams visibility into everything being done—projects in motion, tasks completed, issues flagged—so progress is transparent in real time. The emphasis shifts from “what do I need to do next?” to “what has the AI already done, and where does it need me?”
And it won’t be limited to text. The interface will be multimodal: chat for quick direction, voice for in-the-moment input, visuals for dashboards and design, and interactive summaries that adapt on demand. Work becomes less about clicking through applications and more about guiding and supervising a digital workforce that knows when to pull you in.
Think about how this changes roles:
In short: the AI Work Surface is less a tool you “use” and more an environment you oversee—a workspace that works for you.
Microsoft isn’t the only one moving in this direction. On Friday, Elon Musk announced his cheekily-named Macrohard, a platform aimed squarely at dethroning Microsoft. His vision: software made entirely by AI, with no human coders in the loop. Musk’s bet is that AI agents can create production-ready code, letting tools adapt in real time to what users need.
This isn’t just another competitor to Microsoft—it’s a direct challenge to the very idea of static software. It offers a vision of work that’s fluid, intuitive, and AI-first—even hyper-personalized to each person’s individual needs and preferences. With Musk’s track record of overturning industries, Macrohard could be the spark that forces productivity into a new era (and wipes a trillion or two in MSFT market cap).
AI Work Surfaces free us from app silos. Instead of one vendor lock-in, we’ll orchestrate a digital workforce across many AI and tool providers—choosing the right AI for each task while staying informed in real time.
AI agents won’t just support work; they’ll partner in it, coordinating efforts and taking ownership of tasks. The result will be a more vibrant, competitive ecosystem: more choice, better tools, and workplaces where technology adapts to us, not the other way around.
Here’s the latest on ChatGPT’s latest AI updates, all recently announced:
About Trent: Trent Gillespie is an AI Keynote Speaker, CEO of Stellis AI, former Amazon leader, and advisor on building AI-Native, AI-Enabled businesses. Book Trent to speak to your group or book a call to discuss using AI within your business.
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