Microsoft (MSFT 1.14%) has been an early winner of the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). The company was an early investor in ChatGPT creator OpenAI and moved quickly to capitalize on the breakout capabilities of generative AI.

The fruit of those efforts is Copilot, Microsoft's suite of AI-powered digital assistants, and its user base has been growing like wildfire. The company recently reported that "60% of the Fortune 500 have adopted Copilots, and 65% use Azure OpenAI Service." This seems to suggest that Copilot has been wildly successful -- but not everyone is convinced.

A blast from the past

At the Salesforce (CRM 0.68%) Dreamforce annual user conference this week, CEO Marc Benioff had a few choice words about Microsoft's flagship AI assistant: "Microsoft Copilot is basically the new Microsoft Clippy, that customers have not gotten value from." Regarding the recent rush to develop the large language models (LLMs) that underlie generative AI, "This is like we're selling science projects to companies, and they're tired of it."

Benioff is referring to the widely disparaged animated paperclip Microsoft unveiled as part of Office 96. The "smart" digital helper was designed to assist with certain tasks, but it was viewed more as an annoyance and reviled by users. As such, Benioff's comments had a tone of mockery.

These comments came as Benioff was touting the utility of the Salesforce Agentforce, its own suite of AI "agents" designed to help employees be more productive by streamlining tasks in service, sales, commerce, and marketing, "driving unprecedented efficiency." If that sounds a lot like what Copilot does, that's because it is.

So what does this mean for Microsoft investors? In a word: nothing. It's clear that Benioff has an ulterior motive for promoting Salesforce's own AI tools.

His disparaging comments notwithstanding, customers continue to adopt Copilot at a brisk pace, and Microsoft has a laundry list of testimonials from users detailing how they use Copilot to save time and money. Salesforce still needs to prove the value of its offering.

Oh, and at 37 times earnings, Microsoft stock is cheaper.