Recent AI development points to a bigger change in how employees work
The rapid evolution of AI tools is no longer just changing how employees work, as recent developments now point to a rewrite of the norms and habits that define workplace culture itself.
The way employees interact with software at work is shifting from point-and-click tools to AI agents that can interpret intent and deliver polished outputs with minimal human intervention.
Tech companies are now rallying around a label for this shift: "vibe working."
Where did it come from?
Vibe working was borrowed from an earlier trend in software development known as "vibe coding."
In a report from IBM, vibe coding is described as "a new and loosely-defined term in software development that refers to the practice of prompting AI tools to generate code rather than writing code manually."
"Vibe coding is a fresh take in coding where users express their intention using plain speech and the AI transforms that thinking into executable code," said Shalini Harka, lead AI advocate, in the IBM report.
"The goal of vibe coding is to create an AI-powered development environment where AI agents serve as coding assistants, making suggestions in real time, automating tedious processes, and even producing standard codebase structures."
According to the same IBM overview, vibe coding embraces a "code first, refine later" mindset that prioritises experimentation and fast prototyping before performance tuning and optimisation.
It also notes that the concept is closely tied to the rise of large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude, which let users stay "in the zone of creativity and automate coding works."
Is vibe working possible?
Major tech leaders now seem to be lifting the idea behind "vibe coding" and stretching it far beyond software development, rebranding it as the foundation of a broader "vibe working" era across the workplace.
Anthropic head of product Scott White made reference to "vibe working" in a recent interview with CNBC.
"Everybody has seen this transformation happen with software engineering in the last year and a half, where vibe coding started to exist as a concept, and people could now do things with their ideas," White told CNBC.
"I think that we are now transitioning almost into vibe working."
White noted that this shift in working style is what its new Claude Opus 4.6 model is meant to enable.
Claude Opus 4.6 is pitched as a system that can sustain longer assignments and deliver professional-grade outputs in areas such as coding, financial analysis, and document-heavy enterprise workflows.
"If I think about the last year, Claude went from a model that you can sort of talk to to accomplish a very small task or get an answer, to something that you can actually hand real significant work to," White told CNBC.
"Opus 4.6 is a model that makes that shift really concrete for our users."
Microsoft, meanwhile, has taken the phrase "vibe working" and embedded it directly into its Microsoft 365 Copilot roadmap.
"Today, we're bringing vibe working to Microsoft 365 Copilot with Agent Mode in Office apps and Office Agent in Copilot chat," said Sumit Chauhan, Corporate Vice President, Office Product Group, Microsoft, in a blog post last year.
"In the same way vibe coding has transformed software development, the latest reasoning models in Copilot unlock agentic productivity for Office artifacts."
Microsoft's Agent Mode in Excel and Word lets employees describe tasks in plain language while Copilot handles the technical work. In Excel, the agent selects formulas, creates sheets, and builds visualisations, then summarises key findings. In Word, it drafts and refines documents through an interactive back-and-forth.
Office Agent in Copilot chat applies the same approach across apps, clarifying intent, researching information, and assembling presentation-ready PowerPoint decks or Word documents, leaving humans to focus on direction and review rather than production.
Anthropic's model ambitions and Microsoft's product features indicate that major vendors believe vibe working is not only possible but already emerging in practice: AI agents that can be briefed once, then run through sequences of work in the background while humans steer and review.
Shifting workplace culture due to AI
If vibe coding reshaped how engineers think about their tools, vibe working has the potential to reshape how entire organisations think about work.
According to Microsoft's blog, the company sees these capabilities as "the new pattern of work for human-agent collaboration."
"Get started with a simple prompt and then work iteratively with Copilot—steering it as it orchestrates multi-step tasks to deliver high-quality Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations," said Chauhan.
Anthropic's positioning of Claude Opus 4.6 points in the same direction.
White told CNBC that Claude has moved from something that could "sort of talk to to accomplish a very small task or get an answer, to something that you can actually hand real significant work to."
These remarks further embed AI tools as a junior colleague or specialist contractor, expected to handle long-running analysis, research, or drafting with limited supervision.
It builds on employees' current budding relationship with AI, where data from The Adaptavist Group shows many employees are now consulting the technology for legal or policy issues and HR-related matters.
Other employees are also engaging in small talk with an AI bot than with a human colleague. For HR leaders, this could signal a future where employees spend more of their working day interacting with machines than they do with one another.
Crucially, IBM stresses that this does not mean humans can step away.
IBM's analysis of vibe coding underscores that while AI can accelerate prototyping and reduce manual effort, it also introduces technical complexity, maintenance and updates challenges, and especially security concerns when AI-generated artifactsare not subject to normal oversight.
The same risks could apply when spreadsheets, reports, and slide decks are produced by semi-autonomous agents: organisations will need new norms, audits, and safeguards to ensure that vibe working does not quietly embed errors or vulnerabilities into critical decisions.
