Satya Nadella rejected a proposal by Microsoft's Omar Shahine to make the OpenClaw-based "Scout" AI agent addictive
Story Overview
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella pushed back hard on an internal memo from Omar Shahine, the corporate vice president leading the Scout team, that called for turning the new OpenClaw-based AI agent into an addictive experience as its first development phase. Nadella labeled the document nonsense on an internal message board and suggested the authors might want to work elsewhere, after the memo had already leaked and reached outside reporting.
Scout's internal pilots already logged heavy daily use among more than a thousand employees
The agent reached that level of engagement before any public announcement at Build 2026, which raises the question of how much additional friction or hooks the memo's authors thought were still needed to lock in habits.
The memo's authors and any follow-up steps inside Microsoft remain unaddressed in public
Shahine has not commented, Microsoft has issued no further statement, and the three-phase roadmap from standalone addiction to broader agentic platform sits in limbo without confirmation on whether any part of it has been revised or dropped.
Many users condemned the memo urging addiction to Microsoft Scout AI as a toxic corporate value that prioritizes user dependency and produces bad software.
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https://www.404media.co/microsoft-wants-to-make-people-addicted-to-scout-its-new-ai-assistant-internal-documents-reveal/
chat is he cooked
Oh, man, Omar has worked at Microsoft for decades. Tough to be rebuked in public like this.
My boss at Microsoft used to tell me "Scoble, you are one tweet away from being fired." (I helped write Microsoft's first social media policy).
I think everyone needs to learn the lesson here: position your product carefully.
Correct: "we are here to help humans do more." Incorrect: "we are here to addict our users."
chat is he cooked
@valhalla_dev @swyx Yeah, addicting users is pretty much the entire reason Meta exists, for instance, and many other companies.
But you don't say that in public. :-)
Microsoft has one of the strictest policies about social media and they are very sensitive to what is said by their employees.
At the same time, they dont enforce the same restrictions on influencers. And I am not looking at MS in general, its their sub divisions. Like Xbox. I think that hurts them the most when its their influencers who are toxic yet their employees are the ones who have to be careful.
I say this because Nintendo and Playstation will cut their influencers quick for negativity. The double standard has hurt Xbox so much.
Yeah.
When I worked at Microsoft I was told quite a few times "don't let them see how the sausage is made."
In trying to control the narrative Satya threw one of his soldiers under the bus. Not fun. It’s a brutal world.
I think Satya could have contextualized it better and shown better leadership here. "Hey, I know that people in tech talk like that all the time, and I hate it. We aren't here to addict people, but are here to make people's lives better."
Microsoft's hands aren't clean here. It regularly does stuff that isn't good for its customers. When I worked there we called them "strategy taxes." Things that you had to do to serve the business, rather than to make its products rock for everyone.
It makes Satya look bad to me, actually. Because, well, it is the goal of products to addict people. It's just that Satya doesn't want to be seen as a casino kind of addiction. Fair enough, but he could have handled this better.
@Scobleizer @swyx It is pretty SV-brained that "addictive apps" have gained a positive connotation to some and not, as Satya I'm sure recognizes, an inherently negative one.
@Scobleizer @swyx particularly rough that it was an internal memo rather than a public tweet
@Scobleizer @swyx
@Scobleizer @swyx i am with satya on this one,
microsoft’s only real problem is attitude towards users,
make it addictive is a seriously bad value to propagate internally,
especially for enterprise focus,
imagine ceos reading this, what they will feel, lol,
know your dna.
@swyx I think he survives, though, because, let's be honest. Addicting users is pretty much the goal of building products.
Oh, man, Omar has worked at Microsoft for decades. Tough to be rebuked in public like this.
My boss at Microsoft used to tell me "Scoble, you are one tweet away from being fired." (I helped write Microsoft's first social media policy).
I think everyone needs to learn the lesson here: position your product carefully.
Correct: "we are here to help humans do more." Incorrect: "we are here to addict our users."
@iamkylebalmer @swyx I understand wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt and yeah like, some small time marketing person might use the word "addictive" loosely. But with a company like Microsoft this should be taken very seriously, by them and by the public. There are AI inspired murderers!
@Italianclownz @swyx Yeah. When I was doing this work things were looser, but the rules got stricter after I left.
@swyx That dual monitor chaos is familiar to anyone deep in the AI grind
It shows how our attention spans are adapting to constant data flow
@swyx mmm feels like just poor wording. addicted as in “damn this is great i’m going to use the hell out of it” rather than in the designed dependence sense. but considering it could go both ways it’s a slip to put that in writing
@Scobleizer @swyx Obviously, everyone only sees the profit; otherwise, they wouldn’t do such things
@swyx Overhauling Copilot? Its only been out for a few years
@swyx He might be thrown under the bus to save public face, but the goal probably stays the same 🤷♂️, AI by it's non deterministic nature has a very gacha games feel, so would not surprise me ai companies look at what gaming companies did and adopt some of those features.
@Scobleizer @valhalla_dev @swyx Especially when making games they seem like a casino. I really enjoyed the story of ready player one as it highlights the need to have balance.
@KuroiKumanoashi @swyx Yeah. So hard to get right. And this was in an internal memo, too. I hate the politics of sharing those publicly. Often just to burn someone.
strategy tax is such a good term for this.
same with any project i suppose. where is the balance between what is good for me and what is good for thee
and when does it tip from a fair enough got to make some money to taking the piss
agree also could have been handled better. airing dirty laundry hurts everyone involved. but, it happens. it’s just at tha scale with that much scrutiny these things get magnified