Nathaniel Whittemore

Each model brings different strengths, and our role is to orchestrate them in ways that deliver the best outcomes for customers.

And as much as that sounds like corporate speak, the reality is that one of the great frustrations for enterprise AI users is model lock-in.

So to the extent that they can work with partners like ServiceNow where they have access to multiple models, for many people that's going to be desirable.

Staying in the anthropic world for a minute, Claude Cowork has apparently raised the alarm at Microsoft.

The information reports that the release of Anthropic's new productivity platform triggered emergency meetings.

Product leaders at Microsoft told colleagues that Cowork seemed like a competitor for 365 Copilot.

They noted that Cowork seems more capable than Copilot when working on Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint slides.

Staff were told to keep improving Copilot, and that seems to be exactly what's happened over the past two weeks.

Sources said that multiple divisions at Microsoft are working on prototypes that mimic the functionality of Cowork, and they noted that Claude, which Microsoft now has access to, is powering many of these prototypes.

Now obviously Microsoft's relationship with OpenAI has been changing, but in many ways since the release of ChatGPT, Microsoft has been largely focused on keeping feature parity with OpenAI.

Now it's pretty clear that keeping up with Anthropic has become their major concern.

The reporting also noted a tension between Anthropic's ability to move with startup speed, i.e.

they built Claude Cowork in 10 days, as compared to Microsoft's status as a lumbering tech behemoth.

In addition to the speed of execution, there's also differences in what the companies can put out.

Sources noted that Cowork is only available as a research preview, and that Anthropic has warned users that it carries massive inherent security risks, which is all well and good for Anthropic, but Microsoft wouldn't be able to release a version of Copilot that carries that same level of risk.

Still, it sounds like all hands on deck at Microsoft to keep up in the race.

Executives and product leaders are reportedly discussing possible new features in a Teams channel called AI Accelerator.

CEO Satya Nadella was even reportedly dabbling with Cloudbot, now called Moltbot, over recent days.

Nadella encouraged staff to also test the automation tool and figure out how its features could be applied to Copilot.

The information writes, the conversations are part of Nadella's effort to put pressure deputies to speed up the company's use of AI in its products, and they resemble how other AI developers, including Google and OpenAI, have reacted with urgency to competitive products in the fast-paced field.