Nadella Shuts Down Microsoft Exec's Push to Make AI 'Addictive'
Microsoft's CEO internally rebuked a memo urging the company to make users addicted to its new AI agent, Scout.
Satya Nadella isn't having it. The Microsoft CEO pushed back against an internal memo from another company executive that argued Microsoft should "make people addicted" to Scout, the company's new AI agent product.
Nadella delivered his rebuke in an internal message on Thursday, rejecting the addiction-driven framing outright. The original memo had advocated for an aggressive engagement strategy around Scout, positioning user dependency as a goal.
The pushback signals a tension inside Microsoft over how aggressively to pursue user retention for its AI products. Nadella apparently drew a clear line: building compulsive usage loops isn't the playbook.
Scout is Microsoft's latest entry in the rapidly expanding AI agent space, where companies are racing to build autonomous software that can act on behalf of users. How Microsoft markets and grows that product just got a philosophical guardrail from the top.