Claude’s Entry into Word

On April 10, Anthropic launched the public beta of Claude for Word, completing the integration of AI into the Microsoft Office suite. Over the past six months, Claude has permeated the entire Office ecosystem, from Excel to PowerPoint and now Word.

This news has made waves in the overseas tech community. However, in the Chinese market, another battle regarding “AI + Office” has already begun.

Claude’s Revision Mode

The most emphasized feature of Claude for Word is its revision mode (Tracked Changes). The official demonstration is clear: when opening an NDA contract, Claude provides modification suggestions in the right sidebar, with each change displayed in Word’s native revision mode—original text struck through, new content marked as inserted, allowing users to accept or reject changes one by one.

This design is highlighted by Anthropic for a simple reason: it addresses the biggest trust issue with AI office tools—“What changes did AI make? I need to see them.”

In industries like law, finance, and compliance, where audit trails are strictly required, revision mode is not just an added feature but a prerequisite. Anthropic smartly positions this functionality at the forefront, directly targeting the trillion-dollar global legal services market.

But here’s the question: Is revision mode an invention of AI?

No. This is a basic feature that both Word and WPS have had for over twenty years. Claude merely attaches AI output to this existing mechanism.

China’s Office Software’s AI Tracing Practices

In the Chinese market, WPS AI has already implemented similar capabilities. When users ask WPS AI to modify a piece of text, the changes can also be presented in revision mode. Every addition or deletion is traceable, and users can review, accept, or reject changes one by one. This is not about “catching up”; it is common sense in product design—AI-assisted office tools must leave the final decision-making power in human hands.

The difference lies in the narrative. Claude markets “revision mode” as a selling point, while WPS AI considers it a standard feature.

Behind this is a difference in product philosophy. Overseas AI companies tend to use a “disruptive” narrative, packaging existing features as new inventions; Chinese office software is more pragmatic, embedding AI capabilities into existing workflows without deliberately emphasizing “what AI has done,” allowing users to use it naturally.

Local Context: Claude Cannot Review Chinese Contracts

The first use case officially listed for Claude for Word is “legal contract review.” The demonstration scenarios consist entirely of English NDAs, commercial terms, and compensation clauses.

This is fine, as the U.S. legal market is indeed large. However, in China, contract review follows a different logic.

Chinese contracts have unique expression habits: “Party A shall,” “Party B must,” “Both parties agree,” and “This contract shall take effect from the date of signature.” The logical relationships between clauses, the expression of breach responsibilities, and the jurisdiction for dispute resolution all require a deep understanding of the Chinese legal system.

WPS AI has a clear first-mover advantage in this area. It is trained on a vast corpus of Chinese contract data, understands the structural clauses of Chinese contract law, labor law, and corporate law, and can identify local legal risk points such as “standard clauses,” “exemption clauses,” and “excessive penalties.” More importantly, WPS has a complete library of Chinese contract templates—labor contracts, lease contracts, procurement contracts, confidentiality agreements, and equity transfer agreements—covering the main scenarios of daily business operations. Users can open a template and let AI fill in specific clauses, with every change traced and every risk highlighted.

This is something Claude cannot do. It cannot grasp the “flavor” of Chinese contracts, nor can it understand the “rules” of official documents.

Government Documents: A Market Claude Cannot Enter

There is a market in China that Claude cannot reach at all: government documents.

Government agencies and state-owned enterprises produce a large volume of official documents daily—requests, meeting minutes, notices, and work summaries. These documents have strict formatting standards: title levels, font sizes, paragraph spacing, page margins, and even the placement of “no text on this page” have specific requirements.

WPS has over thirty years of accumulation in this field. From the early WPS 1.0 to the current WPS 365, templates and formatting standards for government documents have been internalized into the product’s DNA. WPS AI builds on this foundation with intelligent capabilities, enabling it to:

• Automatically detect formatting deviations and prompt “the title should be in bold size three”
• Identify sensitive words and warn “this expression may involve compliance risks”
• Compare versions and generate “modification explanations” with one click
• Maintain audit trails, recording “who changed what at what time”

These capabilities are not available in Claude for Word. It is not a technical issue but a problem of understanding the context—it simply does not know what a “red-headed document” is, what a “request for instructions” entails, or the standard format for “meeting minutes.”

Ecological Integration: A Unified Experience

One highlight of Claude for Word is its “cross-Office collaboration”—Word, Excel, and PowerPoint share context, allowing data to be pulled from Excel into Word and then condensed into PPT.

WPS also has this capability, and it is even lighter. WPS 365 is designed as an integrated solution: documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDFs, mind maps, and flowcharts all operate under the same account system. Users do not need to “cross-application” because they are all in one application.

When opening WPS AI, users can say, “Create a chart from this spreadsheet data and insert it into the document,” and AI automatically completes the format conversion and content insertion. Saying, “Summarize this document into a 10-page PPT,” allows AI to automatically extract key points and generate slides.

There is no need for account switching, no format compatibility issues, and no confusion over “where is this file stored in the cloud.” WPS’s “family bucket” is the result of integrated design rather than a patchwork solution.

Enterprise-Level Capabilities: Data Sovereignty

Claude for Word emphasizes operating “within an enterprise security framework,” supporting Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Microsoft Azure, and other enterprise gateways. This is fine, but for Chinese enterprises, there is an even stricter requirement: data sovereignty.

Key industries such as finance, government, energy, and telecommunications have strict regulatory requirements for data security. No matter how useful an AI office tool is, if data needs to be sent to overseas servers, it will not pass compliance checks.

WPS AI supports private deployment, allowing enterprises to run AI capabilities on their own servers, keeping data entirely within the internal network. Additionally, WPS has completed domestic compatibility certifications with mainstream Chinese operating systems, databases, and middleware.

This is not just an “added bonus”; it is a “passport”. In the Chinese enterprise market, without these capabilities, AI office tools cannot even enter.

Furthermore, Claude for Word is priced at $20 per month for Pro users (approximately 145 RMB) and $100 per month for Max users (approximately 725 RMB), requiring a subscription to Microsoft 365 to use. In contrast, WPS AI is a value-added service for WPS members, with a lower price threshold, making it more user-friendly for domestic users.

Data-Driven Insights: WPS AI’s User Base

By the end of 2025, WPS AI’s domestic monthly active users exceeded 80.13 million, a year-on-year increase of 307%, with the proportion of enterprise users rising to 42%. During the same period, WPS Office’s overall global monthly active device count reached 678 million.

What does this number mean? It means that WPS AI is no longer just a “concept product” but a productivity tool with a real user base. 80 million monthly active users are using AI daily to write documents, review contracts, and create PPTs, and this usage data continuously optimizes AI capabilities.

Conclusion: The Chinese Approach to AI Office Tools

The launch of Claude for Word signifies that AI office tools have entered a “deep water zone.” It is no longer about flashy demonstrations of “what AI can write,” but rather a practical approach to “how AI can be embedded into workflows.”

In this race, Chinese office software has not been absent. WPS AI, with over thirty years of local accumulation and a deep understanding of Chinese contexts, has carved out a different path:

• It does not emphasize “AI disruption” but integrates AI capabilities into daily office tasks.
• It does not pursue “omnipotence” but focuses on vertical scenarios such as “contract review,” “government documents,” and “enterprise compliance.”
• It does not use high prices to filter users but makes it accessible and effective for more people.

Claude has entered Word, but Chinese office software has long been prepared. This is not a story of catching up but rather the parallel evolution of two distinct paths.

For users, the choice of which path to take depends on where you work, what language you use, what contracts you review, and what documents you write. The competition among AI office tools ultimately hinges not on technology but on understanding the context. In this dimension, local players have the first-mover advantage.