Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: Microsoft Copilot is the next “Clippy”

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff believes Microsoft is about to repeat the development of an abhorrent program to assist users of Copilot, the technology company’s foray into AI-powered assistance.

“We all know now that Microsoft Copilot is basically the new Microsoft Clippy and that customers have not gotten any value from it,” Benioff said in a Bloomberg Interview on Thursday during Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco.

Microsoft has invested over $13 billion in OpenAI, the large language model that powers Copilot. Launched in November 2023, Copilot promised to speed up simple office tasks like summarizing team meetings and composing emails. Chemical giant Dow plans to roll out the assistant to its 35,900 employees by the end of the year after a successful pilot test, but others aren’t convinced by the $30-a-month cost – especially after Microsoft had to fix Copilot Designer’s problem of generating inappropriate images and the Recall feature that took excessive screenshots, putting users’ privacy at risk.

Of course, Benioff’s criticism of Copilot is in Salesforce’s best interest. The software giant announced a “hard pivot” to Agentforce, its own AI assistant program. Unveiled last week, the program promises integration with hundreds of other applications to streamline business processes. It’s part of a growing movement to use AI agents instead of copilots to take tech assistance a step further.

“It’s like we’re selling scientific projects to companies, and they’re fed up with it. They haven’t gotten any value out of it, and that’s why these customers are so excited to come here,” Benioff said. “And they get immediate value and can do everything they’ve heard about the possibilities with this next-generation platform.”

Benioff is banking on the success of Agentforce, which is already being tested by a few dozen companies, including Wiley, Open Table and Fossil. So far, the program hasn’t always gone smoothly. Andreessen Horowitz questioned Salesforce’s ability to develop a convincing AI assistant, saying in a blog post in July: “We believe AI will redefine the core data collection system and sales operations so fundamentally that no incumbent is safe.”

Salesforce and Microsoft did not immediately respond to AssetsPlease leave a comment.

AI skepticism

AI skeptics are bracing for the future of tech assistants. According to Goldman Sachs, over $200 billion is expected to be invested in AI by 2025. Some in the industry fear that AI will fail to deliver on its promise of revolutionizing the way people interact with technology, putting the high valuations of many technology startups at risk.

Beyond this potentially quiet moment in the hype cycle surrounding artificial intelligence, companies are also grappling with growing concerns about privacy and security.

“Technology companies are putting this deeply flawed technology into the hands of millions of people, allowing AI models to access sensitive information like their emails, calendars, and private messages,” Melissa Heikkilä wrote in the MIT Technology Review last October.

After Microsoft rolled out updates and AI agent features to Copilot last week, the company reiterated its promise to protect privacy when using Copilot’s chatbot feature. Jamie Teevan, Microsoft’s chief scientist, said Copilot customers would get more value from the product if they optimized its use. She added that the company wants to avoid the trap of a nagging assistant like Clippy as it continues to develop its AI agents. Benioff is not convinced.

“Microsoft has deceived customers with its AI strategy. They don’t have to do it themselves,” he said. “We build it into our platform. Customers shouldn’t be forced to train their models over and over again.”

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