Microsoft Scout is a new AI assistant built on OpenClaw

Like Google, Microsoft is launching its own version of OpenClaw. Microsoft Scout is a full-time assistant that integrates with Microsoft 365 applications such as Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams, allowing businesses to provide virtual assistants to employees to help organize calendars, financial reports, email logs, and more.

Unlike Copilot which resides within Microsoft 365 apps, Microsoft Scout can see and do more. “This is a personal assistant, it’s the first real assistant to give to customers,” explains Omar Shahine, vice president of Microsoft Scout, in an interview with Seaside. “I think it’s important for customers to understand that when you make a call from this agent, it’s a very different type of AI than chat.”

Microsoft Scout can monitor traffic and your calendar to recommend the best time to pick up appointments, school supplies, and dinner dates. It also works as a virtual assistant, checking the things it learns are important to you by reading Teams threads, documents, and email in the background.

Microsoft is getting off to a slow start with Scout, only rolling out the desktop lookup feature to its Frontier customers in the US this week, but the goal is to keep it running in the cloud and beyond. A limited preview will be available to a limited number of customers in the coming months, before Microsoft releases the full cloud version in a big way.

The desktop app is already popular internally, with more than 3,000 Microsoft employees already using the app. Engineers have been using Scout to schedule meetings, help with paperwork, navigate through manuals, and fill out forms. Most of the time to use Microsoft Scout is to stay on top of work, whether it’s work-related or personal. “Many people are using it for personal development… We all have ambitions that we want for ourselves but we often waste time and cannot do it,” says Shahine.

Instead of creating another version of OpenClaw, Microsoft is contributing directly to the core technology of the open source project. It’s surprising to see Microsoft embracing OpenClaw just months after CEO Satya Nadella compared the technology. to the virus. OpenClaw’s additional AI “skills” have also been identified as a dangerous security. I asked Shahine why Microsoft was now confident that it could manage the security and privacy of an AI assistant that could access business data.

“We have a feeding system (for OpenClaw) that makes sure we’re protecting ourselves from things like chain attacks, and just breaking changes,” says Shahine. “It’s a very fast open source project, one of the fastest I’ve ever seen. We use OpenClaw in a sandboxed cloud environment, and we see OpenClaw as untrusted so it has no privacy or access to your Microsoft 365 data.”

Microsoft also uses its security capabilities to manage OpenClaw, including Agent 365, Purview, and Defender. Then there’s the regular red band, privacy reviews, and security reviews to make sure it’s safe for businesses. “I feel good that we’re doing things that Microsoft has a history of managing and protecting,” says Shahine. “OpenClaw is very powerful … so we’re working on a number of things that we’re going to deliver to customers out of the box.”

It’s Google’s push to create Gemini Sparkits take on OpenClaw, which is available to connect to Workspace apps like Gmail and Docs, it looks like there’s a new AI competitor emerging to take over the business assistant. The real test will be how Gemini Spark and Microsoft Scout help to improve everyday life without major security issues, and how quickly these AIs can learn habits and preferences, as a human assistant.