Marc Benioff, co-founder and CEO of Salesforce, has some harsh criticism of Microsoft Copilot. During an interview on the Rapid Response podcast (spotted by Windows Central), the decorated executive described Microsoft’s AI assistant as a “tremendous disservice” to the AI industry, and even compared it to Microsoft’s long-retired office assistant, Clippy.
The topic of discussion on the podcast, which you can find the full video of below, is Saleforce’s Agentforce AI. It’s a competitor to Copilot that offers an AI assistant targeted at increasing productivity in businesses. But Agentforce is customizable. Instead of one AI to rule them all, Salesforce offers agents targeted at different applications. There’s an agent built for customer service, another built for retail, and even another built to dig through analytics. Customers can build their own custom agents, too.
Benioff, unsurprisingly, thinks Agentforce has what it takes to beat Copilot, but the executive didn’t let Microsoft get out of the discussion unscathed.
“When you look at how Copilot has been sold to our customers, it’s disappointing. It doesn’t work. It spews data all over the floors,” Benioff said. “I haven’t found a customer who’s had transformational work with Copilot. It’s not Microsoft Copilot. Copilot is really the new Microsoft Clippy … I don’t think Copilot will be around. I don’t think customers will use it.”
It’s not secret that Microsoft is all-in on AI, with the release of ChatGPT prompting the tech behemoth to invest $10 billion into OpenAI. And for its part, Microsoft has its Copilot Agents that target a similar type of work as Agentforce. In addition, Microsoft is continuing to build out the Copilot+ ecosystem on consumer PCs by integrating AI into basic functions of laptops, including web browsing.
In the enterprise space, it’s still not clear where Microsoft stands. Although Microsoft is one of the wealthiest companies in the world, Salesforce has deep ties within the enterprise realm. And, at least according to its own numbers, Salesforce’s SFR-RAG model is more accurate than even the emerging GPT-4o model from OpenAI.
Although most of our readers will never touch Agentforce, there’s a good chance you’ll interact with the AI at some point. For instance, OpenTable and luxury clothing brand Saks are already using the AI tool for customer service inquires, targeting “routine requests” like reservation changes and redemption of loyalty points.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Google DeepMind's AI world model Genie 4 can now build interactive worlds that you can explore and reshape as they run. It also generates ambient sounds, music, and dialogue that respond to your actions.
The new world model builds on Genie 3 with improved realism, more natural human movement, and better simulations of real-world physics. It could eventually help with everything from game development to training robots.
Apple has an incredible talent for making me admire its products while simultaneously questioning what on earth it's thinking with the pricing. This isn't even something as bizarre as a monitor stand, but the audacity for starting a new laptop lineup from $2,000 doesn't surprise me.
The newly announced 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 is just the latest to showcase this. The funny thing is, I already know that it's going to be a reliable workstation. You get a powerful new 2nm M6 processor, a gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display, and up to 24 hours of battery life. We were impressed by the M5 MacBook Air, so the high-end M6 powered MacBook Pro definitely won't let us down.