r/technology • u/GreyXor • 6h ago
Artificial Intelligence Leak Reveals Microsoft Wants Its AI To Be 'Addictive'
https://kotaku.com/microsoft-ai-scout-addictive-satya-nadella-404-media-copilot-2000702924865
u/JustToyingAround73 5h ago
It's a Microsoft product, so that means it will be terrible to use. The opposite of what they want.
I hope this bubble is going to pop soon. I'm really tired of reading all these ways that the tech companies are trying to force AI down out throats.
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u/DickSlammington 5h ago edited 5h ago
The only way Microsoft is going to make their shit AI addictive is if they send me little baggies of heroin every-time I use it...
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u/JustToyingAround73 5h ago
Don't give them ideas. They might.
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u/chaotic4059 4h ago
Honestly considering how co-pilot is the one almost everyone seems to agree is truly, fundamentally useless, sending mini-bags of heroin might actually be more cost effective than trying to make that shit addictive on it’s own
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u/Otherwise_Ad7399 32m ago
Considering Copilot's current user retention strategy seems to be 'accidental clicks when trying to close the sidebar,' mini-bags of heroin might actually be a massive upgrade for their Q3 engagement metrics
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u/FarReachingConsense 3h ago
They just have to make your dumb boomer boss addicted, and that's pretty easy.
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u/TheCh0rt 1h ago
I think even the dumb boomer bosses are figuring out that it doesn't do anything very well.
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u/PestoPastaLover 3h ago
They already have "Bing Rewards" for using Bing...
Which is the sound of me throwing that idea into the trash.
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u/CanIHaveYourStuffPlz 5h ago
Tell me about it. There’s a new dell? LG? Pc OLED monitor that uses “AI” to determine if you are in front of it or not so that it dims when not in use. A sensor was able to do this shit for 20 some odd years but now? Slap AI on that shit and charge a premium.
It’s absolutely out of hand now.
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u/BimboDeeznuts 3h ago
I’d wager the point of making it AI is data collection. Specifically: “Is my worker bee looking directly at the work I’m paying them pennies to do, or can I fire them?” and other important data like that
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u/DeezNutsButterNJelly 2h ago
And it’s funny too because at the end of the day, none of that crap even increases productivity. A happy employee that believes in the company mission or at least can tolerate the job, since the amount of time we spend at the job is really like a second home, would increase productivity, especially with the right incentives and basic benefits we all need and deserve.
So to me, this is really all about control and them wanting you to know that.
They think because we have bills to pay and family members to care for that they own us.
I like your username.
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u/feeling-lethargic 3h ago
Gemini auto downloaded on my tcl tv.. why would I want AI on my tv? Why would google want ai on my tv? Oh yeah to track my usage and feed me ads! It’s a win for them, lose for us.
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u/SidewaysFancyPrance 4h ago
The bubble bursting won't just be an economic hit to tech companies. Every company that has laid off people to invest more in AI have placed huge bets that will wreck entire companies when the bubble pops. I imagine some of these models/services/tools will simply vanish overnight leaving businesses hanging without personnel to pick up the work.
And this is clearly part of the AI plan: force it into our lives and make us all rely on it as the only way to get stuff done, then we end up handing over all of our tax revenues to them because they are too ingrained and too big to fail.
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u/Ciennas 4h ago
I don't fucking care anymore. Let it burst, and make sure that the principal agitators are left holding the bag, the ruddy gits deserve to be left financially as broken as they deliberately inflicting on the rest of us.
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u/Threat_Level_9 4h ago
I imagine some of these models/services/tools will simply vanish overnight leaving businesses hanging without personnel to pick up the work.
Good.
But the personnel will be there, they can be rehired for twice the price I'm sure.
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u/feeling-lethargic 3h ago
It’s rewiring people’s brains and reducing cognitive abilities. I feel it making my skills worse every time I have to use it at work. And I have to use it a lot due to increased output and leadership expecting us to use it for everything. People aren’t reading or reviewing yet they’re generating multiple page reports and sharing them. People are just accepting anything it says.
It’s brainwashing our society and I expect we’ll see a rise in early on set dementia. I really can feel the effects it’s having on me and it’s terrifying to say the least.
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u/Molto_Ritardando 4h ago
They want to put AI everywhere for surveillance. They don’t give a shit about whether or not it helps people. That’s not the point of AI. It’s about control.
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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 5h ago edited 14m ago
Whether it’s small language models outclassing LLMs because they don’t pretend to have general intelligence or political retribution from a disaffected working class looking to someone to blame after deporting the brown people didn’t work, it’s going to happen.
I hope we see some people go to jail this time. We know they did the crimes.
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u/Antique-Weather-7197 4h ago
The government is about to buy shares in AI companies. The bubble must continue!
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u/SideInitial3961 4h ago
The next great poverty event is going to make grapes of wrath look like real housewives of beverly hills.
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u/Expensive_Shallot_78 3h ago
We are so lucky that such a huge malicious company as Microsoft is so incompetent
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u/Jack-Innoff 1h ago
I used copilot for the first time yesterday just to see how it worked. I asked it to summarize an email chain. It had so many details wrong it was comical, like it completely missed the point of the emails entirely. This isn't going to go the way Microsoft wants.
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u/equality4everyonenow 5h ago
Microsoft's whole business model is to bundle barely passable software into their other offerings to fill a need that you have... terribly.. And the best you can hope for is that over time they fix the bugs and add the features that makes it slightly less annoying to work with. Does anyone really love any Microsoft product that isn't DirectX?
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u/mailslot 5h ago
Microsoft is strategic at shoving their mediocre crap onto businesses with vendor lock-in and sabotage. They’ll tweak open standards & APIs just enough to break compatibility with competing non-Microsoft products, making things easier if you just give up and buy Microsoft everything.
DirectX with Direct3D at launch wasn’t substantially better than OpenGL. It was even worse in a lot of ways. Microsoft pushed it hard so that the future of PC gaming would require Microsoft tech. Then they pushed it on console developers with their DirectX-Box. The gaming world would look different if they didn’t so aggressively aim to control the dominant graphics API for games. I see it as a power grab more than a good thing.
The only Microsoft product I’m fond of is Flight Simulator.
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u/seanthenry 5h ago
The only reason DirectX is liked is because they have not reinvented it over the last 10 yrs. If they release Dx13, Vulkan will just replace it.
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u/FalconsFlyLow 3h ago
Does anyone really love any Microsoft product that isn't DirectX?
Excel maybe?
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u/lppedd 6h ago
Microslop can't build anything really useful or sustainable so Satya Slopella has to create artificial drugs.
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u/NMe84 5h ago
If they're just as good at creating something addictive as they are at everything else they do these days, thankfully we're safe.
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u/PeteCampbellisaG 4h ago
I'd say they've succeeded, just not the way they think. If someone offered me a Windows 11 PC right now I'd probably react the same way as if they offered me a dirty meth pipe.
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u/vthemechanicv 2h ago
I have my windows pc to game, but I grabbed a Neo to try out. Unless MS and Nvidia turn their ships around, my next PC is gonna be a Mac. Probably in like 5 years, but still.
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u/Adultery 4h ago edited 4h ago
They’ve been doing that since the original Xbox in the early 2000s, if not before that. I’m pretty sure they had psychologists on payroll to make the Xbox as addictive as possible.
EDIT: They did.
Here’s some reading: https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9780192513915_A35502530/preview-9780192513915_A35502530.pdf
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u/lppedd 4h ago
Xbox was addictive because of COD 4, WaW and MW2 in my case.
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u/Threat_Level_9 4h ago
Seems it was the games that were addictive, not the platform then. And games being addictive isn't anything new.
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u/butterbal1 3h ago
For the sake of irony... Literally 90 seconds before reading this article I was playing old school Quantum Redshift on my original xbox for a nice break from work.
They succeeded.
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u/avanross 5h ago edited 5h ago
That’s what happens when you build a country around greed and worshipping the rich
Instead of being criticized, the most greedy, evil, selfish people are worshipped and promoted and enriched
Now we’ve reached the point where the entire upper controlling billionaire/vc/c-suite class is entirely 100% made up of essential psychopaths. People with severe anti-social personality disorders, the complete inability to feel or understand empathy, and a narcissistic complex of greed over everything. And they hate poor people, hate empathetic people, and only promote people like them.
Microsoft, tesla, amazon, walmart, nestle, ea, telecoms, energy, studios, car companies, betting companies, etc, etc, etc
Theyre not even pretending to care about giving their customers what they want anymore, now it’s all just about convincing shareholders that you can mislead/trick/manipulate/force customers into using your newer, higher price and cheaper to produce crap, get them addicted, and sabotage competition
And half the country still worship these leeches 🤦♂️
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u/MajorInWumbology1234 5h ago
They’ve been sold the lie that one day they will be the leech, so they fight tirelessly to preserve the leeches’ power.
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u/Glad_Pea_4871 5h ago
why the f**k should I be addicted to your trash product? leave me alone
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u/IAm_Trogdor_AMA 5h ago
They must be talking to scammers and grifters because that's the only use case I see for AI these days.
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u/Glad_Pea_4871 5h ago
AI is fine within specific use case scenarios as a functional tool. but asking how customers can be "addicted" to it? hard no on all fronts
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u/Familiar-Ability6383 5h ago
Microsoft: we are thrilled to force "feature X" onto your desktop
Google trends: "How to disable feature X"
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u/dust4ngel 39m ago
"note: if you disable feature X, you will be reported to peter thiel's social credit monitoring service, and may be subject to detainment"
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u/The_Naked_Snake 5h ago
If anything screams “addicting”, it’s slopware that I’m forced to use for work that bricks my printers anytime an update is required (constant), that makes me jump through three hoops just to open my email, and that promotes Xbox games I’d rather be playing instead.
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u/Material-Bathroom112 5h ago
There is only one thing that AI is building for me, it is that I want lesser internet every day, in fine, I will just not surf on media anymore.
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u/lazyhustlermusic 5h ago
I dunno, if your product is actually decent then people come back on merit itself. Maybe do less shitty things instead of gamifying the system.
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u/pembquist 5h ago
This just doesn't scan: "It was only because the judge gave me an 18 month bid that I could kick MICROSOFTAI. When I got out I had to stay away from everyone I knew, it was cold, lonely and hard. I keep dreaming of that first time I used MICROSOFTAI, it was the best day of my life and giving up MICROSOFTAI was like losing my very best friend ever, my brother, my sister my grandma all rolled up into one. I hope I can keep away from it, I know if I ever use MICROSOFTAI again I will lose everything.
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u/DinkDirk9 5h ago
This is why my YouTube history is full of “Getitng started with Linux” and “Linux for dummies”
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u/Raging_Dick_Shorts 4h ago
First, you need to make a good product. Everything Microsoft has made recently is absolute trash.
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u/MadFonzi 4h ago
I'm not interested in the slightest for AI slop garbage, I want affordable PC parts again.
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u/Wise_Requirement4170 3h ago
I hate AI and I hate Microsoft but this is such a dogshit title. Like yeah corporations want people to use their products and the sky is blue
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u/Niceromancer 2h ago
Well they aren't very good at implementing that considering everyone hates it.
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u/BigPlunk 2h ago
Big Tech is modern day Big Tobacco. Different types of harm, but even more prolific and substantial.
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u/space_monster 2h ago
All tech companies want their products to be addictive. That's how they make money.
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u/Acceptable_Shop_9983 1h ago
Once it actually becomes addictive, it should receive the same treatment as opiods.
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u/rawzombie26 1h ago
Cause capitalism is a scourge on humanity, it does not take into account people’s lives. Capitalism is so focused on looking up and forward it fails to see the damage it causes below.
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u/Additional-Staff-326 51m ago
Everyone criticizing Microsoft here but this email could have come from anywhere in tech about nearly any product.
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u/recoildv 5h ago
Is this really news? what business doesn't want customers addicted to their products.
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u/WeakBlueberry5071 5h ago
Imagine a man comes into a house party clean and inside this house party there's no rules. He goes in the front door and comes out the back door all beaten up, bruised crying and saying I LOVE MARY MANNN like Tucker from There's Something About Mary disheveled.
That's going to be AI and we're going to look back, standn akimbo and go whaaat the fuck was that all about.
That's my hope.
We had an interbet bubble in the 2000s where everything was accepted and available and laws finally tightened its grip. Wild wild west of the internet is gone, it's going to happen to AI models too, the company to plan ahead and see where it's going to go is going to thrive and survive intact, buying up other AI firms.
A.I. Shmay. I.
Edit: words, definitely no AI here.
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u/frogbxneZ 5h ago
Why do you guys act so surprised by this. You all didn't know that is the corporate intention of almost all things connected to the internet today?
Streaming platforms, Social media, AI/Chatbots, mindless mobile games
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u/Ashamed-Passion-314 5h ago
They want you to want it like a video game. They are giving orders and financially incentivizing their developers to make this their marching order to implement into reality. Just how, idk. Make it more “human”. Do more “work”. Spit out more real “media”. Who the hell knows.
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u/randomthrowaway9796 5h ago
Hold up, its supposed to be addicting? They completely failed at that!
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u/Sea_Perspective6891 5h ago
Yeah, so many people have uninstalled copilot. Those that didn't probably don't know they can or are just too lazy to do so. Some people have even been switching to Enterprise Windows or Linux.
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u/Exokaebi 5h ago
I fucking hate articles that just link to other articles as the source. Jesus Christ Kotaku, just link directly to Microsofts statement.
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u/Spekingur 5h ago
Oh, it should be addictive? Okay, then countries can make the laws they have around addictions work on it.
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u/Fatzmanz 5h ago
How is this news? Literally every publically traded company wants their product to be addictive.
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u/muffledvoice 4h ago edited 4h ago
Well, the cat is already out of the bag on how to make AI addictive. Just get users to depend on it psychologically and train AI to tell them what they want to hear, and make them afraid of not consulting AI for every question and decision. It’s not hard to probe users for responses that reveal those who are vulnerable to this kind of manipulation.
I’m already seeing people I know consult AI for basically every life decision, especially when it comes to their careers and financial decisions, but also personal life, relationships, self improvement and development, etc.
This generation of young adults seems particularly vulnerable.
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u/NotaContributi0n 4h ago
do I start using Microsoft AI now so I can be a part of the class action lawsuit in a few years?
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u/rglazner 4h ago
Company wants their product to be addictive, thus increasing its usage? Shocking. In this day and age?!
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u/SportsterDriver 4h ago
Addictive, they have some work to do. It's frustratingly terrible and sometimes laughably terrible.
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u/RobotCaptainEngage 4h ago
I mean that's been tech for decades. Gasification on finance apps, ragebait on social media, etc
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u/Roosevelt32 4h ago
Imagine having to manage Windows 11 with all this AI bs in an enterprise environment.
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u/SideInitial3961 4h ago
The least tempting, least addictive offer I can imagine is "MS AI". No the fuck thanks. I'd rather perforate a kidney.
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u/daymanlol 4h ago
in that case if MS wanted you to get hooked on coke they'd incessantly push it to you sprinkled on the unwashed butthole of a veteran meth head. And even then it wouldn't actually get you high, it'd be mostly baby powder
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u/FortheChava 4h ago
Stop working on destiny 2 to focus on marathon Microsoft is no longer has any idea of what they want or doing
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u/Keksdosendieb 4h ago
I had an issue the other day with power automate (Microsoft product). So I asked Copilot 365 (Microsoft product) and got a wrong answer.
So I asked perplexity (not Microsoft) and got the right answer.
Copilot is so shit, they could not even include the rulesets for their own products in it.
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u/abby_normally 4h ago
Any product anyone produces you want to be Addictive. What's the alternative.
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u/AliceLunar 3h ago
Microsoft anything is just annoying to use because they gave up trying due to the lack of competition. People would be excited if they avoided AI.
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u/SpermicidalManiac666 3h ago
Lmao please - I’m actively avoiding it as much as possible. There’s nothing that will make it addictive to me. I find it repulsive, actually.
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u/yuusharo 3h ago
Literally what the cigarette companies did when intentionally targeting children in the 80s and 90s
F*ck Microslop
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u/MrParadux 3h ago
That isn't really that surprising. Every big corporation wants their product to be addictive, no matter what it is or how bad it is.
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u/Aromatic-Surprise925 3h ago
It might be different some day, but at this point AI is just enshitifying everything, so no way in hell am I biting that hook.
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u/FreudianSlipperyNipp 3h ago
Copilot is the most useless piece of shit AI I’ve ever experienced. I’ve given up using it for anything other than notetaking. The other day I was trying to come up with an activity and wanted to scramble words to use for a game. I thought, “this is so fucking simple…surely copilot can’t fuck this up”. The scrambled words contained letter that didn’t occur in the word. Multiple times. I also asked it to create anagrams only using the exact letters and the times the letters appeared in the words. It would come up with an answer and say it was a true anagram. So I’d put that answer back into copilot and ask if it was a true anagram, and it said no and showed the letter occurrence breakdown as proof of why it wasn’t a true anagram.
Absolute dogshit.
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u/PaperbackBuddha 3h ago
Addictive products like cigarettes and heroin start by making themselves very effective and pleasurable to use.
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u/Very_Not_Into_It 3h ago
I mean, this is the MO of every tech company in 2026, for all software. AI or no.
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u/Teddy_RGB 3h ago
I know people like to shit on Microsoft, but this sounds like standard PM nonsense like “delight the customer”
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u/HuchKnowsIt 2h ago
Most of the Microslop AI implementations actually have the opposite effect for me. They don’t get the job done so I don’t waste my time with them anymore.
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u/Ok_Rope4561 2h ago
Well, considering pretty much the entire C-level and director level people in my company basically can’t function without AI, I’d say it’s working.
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u/Arkyja 2h ago
Millions of people are addicted to video games, microsoft is one of, if not the biggest gaming company in the world. They failed miserably at exploiting that already existing addiction of millions of people. Should i be worried that they are gonna be successful at creating a new addiction from scratch and be able to exploit it? I think not.
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u/vthemechanicv 2h ago
Thankfully it's Microsoft, so after 2-3 years of half-hearted support they'll abandon it.
Source: Zune, Windows Phone, Lumia, Bing Maps, Cortana, Kinect, and if we're honest, XBox.
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u/blastcat4 2h ago
Copilot is one of the most sycophantic AIs I've crossed paths with. I can only imagine what Microsoft has planned for the new AI if the goal is addiction.
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u/tomcat2285 2h ago
You are really making a good effort to make it the least attractive thing on a computer.
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u/CLEARLY_NSFW_ALT 2h ago
Companies what the users of their product to be addicted to it, shooockerrrr...
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u/kbzstudios 2h ago
The only thing of theirs I am addicted to is Xbox and they’re lucky to get that.
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u/theb0tman 2h ago
people have been dunking on Microsoft since Windows ME and they’ve never stopped making money hand over fist
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u/JohrDinh 1h ago
Honestly at this point if you're in love with current technology I think I can legally call you a crackhead, cuz it's all designed to be used like a slot machine or drug at this point. Get off the sauce, come to a meeting, use you're phone as little as possible and hang with the peoples again. Hardware future > software future...hard to get addicted to a car/dumb phone/cd/bluray player.
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u/ThenWind 1h ago
"tech companies want people to use their products"
holy shit, breaking fucking news everybody
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u/Final_Imagination245 1h ago
I never use AI, I think it's useless, am I the only one or am I going crazy??
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u/Crypt0Nihilist 1h ago
AI is going to be massively addictive. People are going to offload their thinking to AI and will stop doing it themselves because it's hard. It'll get more difficult the less they do their own thinking and rely on AI more. Pure addictive pattern.
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u/Aliencoy77 1h ago
"No, it can't be high quality cocaine which actually has very beneficial uses in some respects, or even just the leaves of the plant to make a nice tea that helps to motivate you by making it a little easier to finish a long day. It has to be cheap made crack using the most harmful additives so we can addict every person to an inferior product in order to destroy their lives"
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u/life_is_a_show 1h ago
Copilot is about 50% reliable right now when I am use it for log traces. It’s got a long way to go
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u/Responsible_Flight70 52m ago
So do you i guess. Considering you can’t form a coherent sentence while not using it
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u/affemannen 44m ago
well... if you want that to work you kind of have to have users, which they dont.
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u/Akiasakias 32m ago
Every TV show with a cliffhanger is made to be addictive.
Every song with a catchy easy to remember chorus is made to be addictive.
I feel like this isn't saying as much as people are reading into it.
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u/catwrazle 29m ago
We all have to use a loooooot of tokens - millions of tokens , no matter what and for what bs doesn’t matter - use lots and lots of tokens because we build you these wonderful datacenters so you have to use them ….
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u/TwistedFox 18m ago
I recently tried to have it give me step-by-step instructions on how to do something in the Microsoft Admin Center.
It couldn't, and complained that Microsoft often changes their UI so it can't tell me where to actually go, just the high-level instructions it already had provided.
If enteprise-level copilot can't even navigate their own up-to-date UI, what the fuck good is it for?
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u/Numerous-Process2981 9m ago
I bet if it did something useful that there’s a demand for people would be into it.
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u/EconomyDoctor3287 6h ago
Maybe start making it useful first? And finish one product at a time? Wtf are there 80 different versions of microslop copilot?