I've just canceled copilot since a single query cost me 50% of monthly quota lol. Fuck them.
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
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Why not post the original source 404Media instead of this recycled content site? 404 is great. https://www.404media.co/microsoft-wants-to-make-people-addicted-to-scout-its-new-ai-assistant-internal-documents-reveal/
except Microsoft will probably suck at AI too so if it becomes addictive they will likely not be the leading company. They started coding agents almost before anyone else with arguably more data than anyone and still somehow have the worst propriety coding agent.
How's that working out for them?
I’m addicted to laughing at how much money they’ve wasted on it. Does that count?
They'll just make it free to education establishments. Eventually the next generation will only know it.
As they did with Windows and Office tools.
That was an effective long-term ploy but I don't think it would work here - AI is a steam train running on pure cash to heat the boiler
In this case they will also employ the age old enshitification strategy. Instead of (or along with) filling it with advertisements, they can simply drop the model parameters to make it cheaper while pushing it to more and more sloppy content.
Smaller models are incredibly cheap to run, and if people are convinced they want slop, they win. That is why AI is paired with the larger scale project of dumbing down everything.
That's how freemium works: fIrst get you hooked, then make you pay.
When are microslop gonna learn that all they have to do is make a good product?
Funny. Their strategy seems to make them plenty of money.
When people and businesses stop buying their products
I dunno. That keeps happening and they seem to keep doubling down.
Their strategy since the 80s has been to half-ass shit and sell it to large scale businesses, establish their software as the default software across industries, so then everyone else has to learn and buy it.
Literally started with MS DOS. Then Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, and lots of small stuff. They kill entire industries that were making better software. None of the above 4 things were Microsoft even close to better than preexisting software. People were swearing off DOS and Windows 3x when they crashed constantly in the early 90s and late-stage capitalism said "hold my beer" and made them the most valuable company in history within a decade.
The best addictiveness is being helpful. But I bet it is too difficult for MS, so they will proceed with some psychological shit to keep users.
Not necessarily. If it answers you question and go go about your day, that's not as good for Microsoft user numbers/engagement.
They probably want it to just barely get you exactly what you need to keep you on the edge. Once they start training models for user engagement the enshitification will begin
They probably want it to just barely get you exactly what you need to keep you on the edge.
Phrasing!
ugh let me finish!
The only addictive thing Microsoft has ever had a hand in is Age Of Empires II.
Solitaire is what led to Windows dominating the market
Lol my SO and i still. Play LAN AOE2 to this day. such a great game
Hell yeah. Briton longbows FTW.
Microsoft doesn't have it in their DNA to get people addicted to AI. That part of their DNA mutated into a cancer a long time ago.
Microsoft meant be "addictive" in the sense of using Microsoft's AI to make a spreadsheet, type an email, make a PowerPoint etc.. Microsoft wants AI to access all your information to so its results are custom to the user and provide huge value.
This is where value and profit are a contradiction. How much profit is Microsoft willing to potentially throw away in an effort to provide an incredible AI user experience? Spoiler alert: not enough.
When was the last time you were blown away by a corporation because you had such a great experience and couldn't stop telling people about it? This is what Microsoft wants to happen with their AI but they haven't been capable of doing that with any of their products for decades ei Windows 10, 11, Bing...
The last I thought "what a great product" from them was when I used winxp for the first time, and that was only because I came from 98se (which was just shy of the bane of humanity, whose title then belonged to win98). After a while using XP, I realized it was actually garbage, and that "good compared to" was not the measure I wanted for my os, and so began my search for a daily Linux. This was 20 years ago. They have decidedly not gotten better in those 20 years.
Indeed. I remember someone I respected raving that they had their new WinXP computer on for 2 weeks straight without it crashing and being blown away by the new advanced technology.
Teenage me didn't have any idea that would have been a low bar even in the 1980s.
It's been a long time since they have done anything well. Look at how much of a flop OneDrive was. They don't have the framework as a company to develop and train AI to be the way the leaked email wants it to be
Man, surveillance loves snooping what AI is snooping.
Well it worked, in a way. It got many many more people addicted to hating Microsoft.
Addicted to Linux
And if a pharmaceutical or drug has addictive properties with no medical uses, the government outlaws it by scheduling it as having abuse potential. Seems like a big double standard.
I’ve got some bad news… all of society is based on double standards. Humans are far less logical and much more emotional, gullible, biased and egotistical than we would like to think.
While it's just a guess, pharmaceutical lobbying is likely why. None of that happened before the FDA was created sometime in the early 1900s.
Right now we're in the political stages of considering the regulating of internet access to minors, the addictiveness of social media is not regulated.
It’s an interesting thought, and maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but why would the pharmaceutical industry lobby to have certain drugs outlawed? For example, Purdue pharma went to great lengths to hide the truth about the addictiveness of their drug.
My limited understanding of the history was that during the patent medicine era, medicines had proprietary formulas and varying compositions. For example, many formulas had cannabis extract, others contained opium. The initial regulations therefore were done for medical purposes of drug purity. Edited to add, it wouldn't surprise me if the overuse of opium in the patent medicine era led directly to judging the medical usefulness of these drugs, although it's just a guess.
Wait, what? Does this mean when AI told me I was insightful and right over and over about everything I typed in... it was just to make me want to continue to use it?... How could this be?
I know the media frames this poorly and someone at Microsoft wasn't smart enough to dance around the subject but everyone wants their products to be addictive. The sugar industry, petrochemicals, beauty etc etc. They all want this.
It probably needs to be if they have any hope of recouping what they've spent
They just want it to he addictive so that people use it a bunch. Then they try to sell enterprise level versions to companies they can say look how much people use it, it must be because it is so useful
You don't always get what you want...
Did they give their drug dealers jobs?
Drug dealers are self employed.
I prefer dealing for a small practice. The pay is a bit lower, but I appreciate the benefits and stability.
Of course, they want all the data and they want all the subscriptions.
I thought that was kind of the point of all of them.
I have the ChatGPT app on my iPhone. I don't love it, but I do like it for what it is. I also don't pay for it. Siri and Apple Intelligence made a bunch of empty promises. Hell, Star Trek: The Next Generation set us up for so much disappointment in the 2020s. The fact that you can't just talk to your phone and have a full on conversation with it is pretty damn disappointing in 2026. Well, you can with an app, but it's creepy and it's driving up the cost of computer parts, so it's one hell of a monkey's paw.
But at the same time, I was giving a coworker a ride home, and Michael Jackson came up in conversation. I was a big fan in the 80s but really stopped caring about him in the 90s (not because of the allegations; I just moved on to rock and metal). My coworker mentioned a music video with Magic Johnson in it, and I asked ChatGPT what it was. While driving, because it has a voice prompt. I spoke to it like I'd speak to any passenger in my car. I said — this is right outta the app's history — "I heard there was a music video that Michael Jackson did that Magic Johnson was in it. Do you know what that is? I'm just gonna take what I said." That last sentence wasn't to ChatGPT, I just didn't hit the end/send button hard enough and it kept recording. The context baffles me, too. Anyway, the video was "Remember the Time" and it gave me four paragraphs about it, but I was driving, so it just spoke them, through CarPlay.
I don't love ChatGPT, but this is the kind of shit we were promised with Siri 10 years ago. Just to be able to ask it a question and have it answer you, no muss, no fuss.
There's no reason why you should ever have to touch your phone. You should be able to do it all by touch if you want to. Especially if you have earbuds, you should be able to ask it 90% of what you'd look up manually and have it just tell you. That's the future. Google is probably most of the way there, and I like Android, I like customising the home screen, the lock screen, widgets, I like having a keyboard that doesn't censor you and change what you say after you say it because what you said wasn't politically correct — in no uncertain terms, fuck iOS for that — but I also don't like Google and their data selling policies. Google is pretty much scum. Not that Apple are saints, but I still think of them as the computer company that made the Macintosh. I use Macs at home. I don't like how they're getting into services (though I do love Apple Music). I do love that they're getting rid of the bean counter, Tim Cook, and getting an actual engineer as CEO starting in September (John Ternus). Tim Cook seems like a nice guy, but I don't think he took Apple in the right direction, though I'm sure the shareholders vehemently disagree since he made them rich. Also, the M-series Macs have been great. I just hope Ternus makes them better.