Marc Benioff said Microsoft’s Copilot AI hasn’t lived up to the hype.
The Salesforce CEO said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call that its own AI is nothing like Copilot, which he said was unimpressive.
“So many customers are so disappointed in what they bought from Microsoft Copilot because they’re not getting the accuracy and the response that they want,” Benioff said. “Microsoft has disappointed so many customers with AI.”
Microsoft Copilot integrates OpenAI’s ChatGPT tech into the company’s existing suite of business software like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that comes with Microsoft 365. Launched last year, Copilot is meant to help companies boost productivity by responding to employee prompts and helping them with daily tasks like scheduling meetings, writing up product announcements, and creating presentations.
In response to Benioff’s comments, Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for AI at work, said in a statement to Fortune that the company was “hearing something quite different” from its customers.
“When I talk to CIOs directly and if you look at recent third-party data, organizations are betting on Microsoft for their AI transformation,” he said.
The company’s Copilot customers also shot up 60% last quarter, and daily users have more than doubled, Spataro added.
Benioff’s comments come as he prepares to show off Salesforce’s new AI platform, dubbed Agentforce, at the company’s annual Dreamforce meeting next month. The platform will be targeted at sales and customer service at first and will launch publicly in October.
Meanwhile, Agentforce is already being used by some of Salesforce’s biggest customers including payroll and HR software company ADP, restaurant reservation platform OpenTable, and the Wyndham hotel chain, Benioff told CNBC. He added that its Agentforce AI agents were resolving more than 90% of ADP’s customer service inquiries.
On the earnings call, Benioff predicted Agentforce AI agents are going to be a breakthrough for its customers.
“With our new Agentforce platform, we’re going to make a quantum leap for AI,” he said.
