Like Google, Microsoft launched its own version of OpenClaw. Microsoft Scout is an always-on assistant that integrates with Microsoft 365 applications such as Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams, allowing businesses to assign employees a virtual assistant to help with calendaring, expense reporting, email drafts, and more.
Unlike Copilot that resides within Microsoft 365 apps, Microsoft Scout can see and do a lot more. “This is a personal assistant, the first real personal assistant that we’ve offered to customers,” explained Omar Shahine, vice president of Microsoft Scout, in an interview with Omar Shahine. The Verge. “I think it’s important for customers to understand that you’re going to get a call from this assistant, it’s a very different type of AI than a conversation.”
Microsoft Scout can monitor local traffic and your calendar to recommend the best time to leave for appointments, school pickup, and dinner dates. It also acts as a real assistant, revealing what you learn is important to you by reading Group threads, transcripts, and email in the background.
Microsoft is starting slow with Scout, and is only releasing a desktop preview version to its Frontier customers in the US this week, but the goal is to have this running in the cloud and always on. A limited preview will be available to a small number of customers in the coming months, before Microsoft releases the full cloud version more widely.
The desktop app is already proving popular internally, with more than 3,000 Microsoft employees already using the app. Engineers were using Scout to schedule meetings, help with paperwork, travel with correspondence, and fill out forms. Most of the uses for Microsoft Scout revolve around activities, whether work-related or personal. “Many people use it to become better versions of themselves… we all have desires for ourselves but we often lose track of time and don’t know it,” said Shahine.
Instead of creating a separate version of OpenClaw, Microsoft directly contributes to the core technology of the open source project. It’s surprising to see Microsoft embrace OpenClaw just months after CEO Satya Nadella compared the technology to a virus. Extensions to OpenClaw’s AI “skills” have also been called a security nightmare. I asked Shahine why Microsoft is now confident it can handle the security and privacy aspects of an AI agent that can access so much critical business data.
“We have a takeover plan [of OpenClaw] that makes sure we’re protecting ourselves from things like supply chain risk, and just breaking changes,” says Shahine. We run OpenClaw in a sandboxed cloud environment, and we treat OpenClaw as trusted so it doesn’t have secrets or access to any of your Microsoft 365 data.”
Microsoft also uses its security capabilities to manage OpenClaw, including Agent 365, Purview, and Defender. Then there’s the usual red team, privacy reviews, and security updates to make sure it’s safe for business environments. “I feel good that we are doing things that Microsoft has a history of doing to run the service and protect it,” said Shahine. “OpenClaw is very powerful… so we’re also curating a set of features that we’re going to offer to customers out of the box.”
As Google pushes to make Gemini Spark, its take on OpenClaw, available to connect to Workspace apps like Gmail and Docs, it feels like there’s a new AI race emerging to own the business’s personal assistant. The real test will be how Gemini Spark or Microsoft Scout are able to organize daily life without major security issues, and how quickly these AI agents can learn habits and preferences, like a human assistant.
