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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Thursday rebuked an internal memo that another company executive had written advocating to “make people addicted” to its new AI agent product called Scout. “This is absolutely a non goal! If anything we are doing the exact opposite. We want to make sure AI empowers and adds real value to human endeavor and broad economic growth! We should make our teams clear about this,” Nadella said in a message to roughly 50 of Microsoft’s top engineers working on AI products Thursday morning, according to a copy of the message reviewed by The Information. In his message, Nadella attached a link to a report by 404 Media about the original memo, which had been sent by corporate vice president Omar Shahine to a small number of employees. In that memo, Shahine outlined a plan to develop Scout in “three phases from addictive app to agentic platform.” Shahine has been leading a team of engineers developing Scout, which is based on the open source OpenClaw AI agent software and which Microsoft publicly announced at its Build conference Tuesday. “Not sure what this document is or who is writing and leaking this nonsense! They may want to go work elsewhere,” Nadella said in Thursday’s staff message. The episode shows the importance of Scout’s rollout to Microsoft, and Nadella’s sensitivities around the public perception of such AI products. Microsoft is in the midst of overhauling its Copilot AI tools to include new features like Scout, which are a cornerstone of its push to convince more businesses to spend heavily on the software. Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw said in a statement that Scout is for “helping people accomplish tasks more effectively—not encouraging dependency. Our goal isn’t more screen time. It’s more time back.” “As we shared in our announcement, we’re taking a thoughtful approach to the rollout—learning with and from customers as the technology evolves, and ensuring people have clear choice and control in how they engage,” Shaw said.
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