Marc Benioff says Microsoft rebranding Copilot as AI 'agents' shows they're in 'panic mode'

• Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff criticized Microsoft for it's AI-powered agents.
• Benioff said Microsoft Copilot was inaccurate and compared it to "Clippy 2.0."

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on Monday accused Microsoft of being in "panic mode" in his latest criticism of the tech giant.

Microsoft on Monday announced that the ability to create AI-powered "autonomous agents" with Copilot — the company's AI digital assistant — would be in public preview next month. The company said the agents could handle "everything from accelerating lead generation and processing sales orders to automating your supply chain."

Benioff's post comes over a month after Salesforce announced its own pivot to AI agents through Agentforce.

"Microsoft rebranding Copilot as 'agents'? That's panic mode," Benioff said in a post on X. "Let's be real — Copilot's a flop because Microsoft lacks the data, metadata, and enterprise security models to create real corporate intelligence."

Benioff also said Copilot is inaccurate and said it "spills corporate data" and forces users to create their own large language models, comparing the tool to Clippy 2.0, a reference to the paper clip assistant introduced to Microsoft Office products in the 1990s.

Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider. Salesforce declined to provide additional comment.

Microsoft announced it was introducing custom "copilots" that could "act as independent agents" earlier this year. In its recent announcement, Microsoft said 60% of Fortune500 companies use Copilot and that some of its clients, including McKinsey and Thomson Reuters, are already using custom autonomous agents to "increase revenue, reduce costs and scale impact."

Benioff previously said his company's Agentforce would allow customers to build custom AI agents that interact directly with customers, are more advanced than AI chatbots, and can be used with the company's products, including its customer-relationship-management software and apps.

"This is the next big transformation," Benioff told Fortune in September, referring to AI agents.

In his X post critiquing Microsoft Copilot, the Salesforce CEO said Agentforce, in contrast, was "what AI was meant to be."

Benioff has recently criticized Microsoft Copilot on several occasions, calling it "disappointing" and claiming it "just doesn't work" in another post on X last week.

He also criticized Copilot, and compared it to Clippy, at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference last month.