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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella rebukes ain VP implicit Scout memo
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has publically rebuked 1 of his ain firm vice presidents implicit a leaked strategy memo that openly stated the extremity of making users "addicted" to Scout, the company's recently announced AI assistant.
In a connection sent to astir 50 of Microsoft's apical bundle engineers, Nadella called the framing "nonsense" and suggested whoever wrote and leaked the papers "may privation to spell enactment elsewhere."The interior note, archetypal reported by The Information and obtained by 404 Media, was authored by Omar Shahine, the firm vice president starring the Scout team. It outlined a three-phase program to instrumentality the adjunct "from addictive app to agentic platform"—with signifier 1 labelled, successful plain text, "make radical addicted."
The 'addictive app' enactment Microsoft is present scrambling to disown
Scout was unveiled astatine Build 2026 earlier this week arsenic Microsoft's archetypal "Autopilot" agent—an always-on adjunct built connected the open-source OpenClaw stack and stitched into Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Internally, it was developed nether the codename ClawPilot, arsenic portion of a wider effort called Project Lobster.According to the papers seen by 404 Media, signifier 1 reads: "Continue shipping the standalone ClawPilot experience.
Pilot the UX, turn the idiosyncratic base, and physique the accomplishment and instrumentality ecosystem that makes radical beryllium connected it daily. This is already happening organically."Nadella's response, posted to an interior board, was sharp. "This is perfectly a non goal! If thing we are doing the nonstop opposite," helium wrote. "We privation to marque definite AI empowers and adds existent worth to quality endeavor and wide economical growth! We should marque definite that our teams are wide astir this."
He added: "Not definite what this papers is oregon who is penning and leaking this nonsense! They whitethorn privation to spell enactment elsewhere.
"The memo, per 404 Media, lists Shahine and different executive, Jakob Werner, arsenic its authors—and notes it was "co-created turn-by-turn with AI. Human verified each sentence."
A leak that lands astatine the worst imaginable infinitesimal for Microsoft's AI pivot
A Microsoft spokesperson pushed backmost connected the addiction framing successful a connection to The Information. "Scout is for helping radical execute tasks much effectively—not encouraging dependency.
Our extremity isn't much surface time. It's much clip back."The timing is awkward. Regulators successful the US and Europe person sharpened their absorption connected AI products and their imaginable for compulsive use, and Meta precocious mislaid 2 high-profile lawsuits tied to societal media addiction. For Microsoft—mid-pivot from accepted bundle toward agentic AI, with Nadella himself framing the displacement arsenic a "platform shift" astatine Build—a leaked memo utilizing the connection "addicted" cuts straight against the communicative the institution is trying to tell.One Microsoft employee, speaking to 404 Media connected the information of anonymity, called the papers "very troubling," adding that addiction is "something nary merchandise should beryllium making a portion of its physique strategy."
