Scout AI assistant is Microsoft's own version of OpenClaw
What's the story
Microsoft has launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) personal assistant called Scout. The innovative tool is built on OpenClaw, an open-source project, and is designed to work with Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook, OneDrive, and Teams. The idea behind Scout is to give businesses a virtual assistant that can help employees with tasks like calendar management, expense reporting, email drafting and more.
Enhanced capabilities
Scout offers a different kind of AI experience
Unlike the existing Microsoft 365 apps' Copilot, Scout has a wider range of capabilities. Omar Shahine, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Scout, told The Verge that "This is a personal assistant, it's the first real personal assistant we've offered customers." He emphasized that users will receive phone calls from this assistant as it offers a different kind of AI experience compared to chat-based systems.
Assistant
It can learn about your preferences
Scout can keep an eye on local traffic and your calendar to suggest the best time to leave for appointments, school pickups, and dinner dates. It also works like a real assistant by picking up things it learns are important to you from Teams threads, transcripts and emails in the background. This way, it can help users stay on top of their tasks whether work-related or personal.
Deployment strategy
How to access Scout?
Microsoft is slowly rolling out Scout, starting with a desktop preview version for its Frontier customers in the US. A more limited preview will be available to select customers in the coming months before Microsoft launches the full cloud version more widely. The desktop app has already gained popularity internally with over 3,000 Microsoft employees using it for scheduling meetings, paperwork assistance, travel bookings and form filling tasks.