Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to company’s 50 top engineers: Please be clear that our goal is not to make…
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has publicly rebuked one of his own corporate vice presidents over a leaked strategy memo that openly stated the goal of making users “addicted” to Scout, the company’s newly announced AI assistant. In a message sent to roughly 50 of Microsoft’s top software engineers, Nadella called the framing “nonsense” and suggested whoever wrote and leaked the document “may want to go work elsewhere.”The internal note, first reported by The Information and obtained by 404 Media, was authored by Omar Shahine, the corporate vice president leading the Scout team. It outlined a three-phase plan to take the assistant “from addictive app to agentic platform”—with phase one labelled, in plain text, “make people addicted.”
The ‘addictive app’ line Microsoft is now scrambling to disown
Scout was unveiled at Build 2026 earlier this week as Microsoft’s first “Autopilot” agent—an always-on assistant built on the open-source OpenClaw stack and stitched into Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Internally, it was developed under the codename ClawPilot, as part of a wider effort called Project Lobster.According to the document seen by 404 Media, phase one reads: “Continue shipping the standalone ClawPilot experience. Pilot the UX, grow the user base, and build the skill and tool ecosystem that makes people depend on it daily. This is already happening organically.”Nadella’s response, posted to an internal board, was sharp. “This is absolutely a non goal! If anything we are doing the exact opposite,” he wrote. “We want to make sure AI empowers and adds real value to human endeavor and broad economic growth! We should make sure that our teams are clear about this.” He added: “Not sure what this document is or who is writing and leaking this nonsense! They may want to go work elsewhere.“The memo, per 404 Media, lists Shahine and another executive, Jakob Werner, as its authors—and notes it was “co-created turn-by-turn with AI. Human verified every sentence.”
A leak that lands at the worst possible moment for Microsoft’s AI pivot
A Microsoft spokesperson pushed back on the addiction framing in a statement to The Information. “Scout is for helping people accomplish tasks more effectively—not encouraging dependency. Our goal isn’t more screen time. It’s more time back.”The timing is awkward. Regulators in the US and Europe have sharpened their focus on AI products and their potential for compulsive use, and Meta recently lost two high-profile lawsuits tied to social media addiction. For Microsoft—mid-pivot from traditional software toward agentic AI, with Nadella himself framing the shift as a “platform shift” at Build—a leaked memo using the word “addicted” cuts directly against the story the company is trying to tell.One Microsoft employee, speaking to 404 Media on the condition of anonymity, called the document “very troubling,” adding that addiction is “something no product should be making a part of its build strategy.”
