Shortly after appointing former Core AI executive Asha Sharma the new CEO of Xbox, Microsoft set about scrubbing away criticisms brandishing the word "Microslop" like a pitchfork, aimed squarely at the company's increasingly rabid investment into generative AI, by banning the word from its Copilot Discord server. Microslop, you see, is "inappropriate," an automatic filter response told users.
As Windows Latest first reported, this only redoubled the Microslop barrage, ultimately ending in the Copilot server being locked. At the time of writing, invites to the server are still paused.
The internet at large never forgets, and especially in the case of intrusive and obnoxious generative AI or AI assistants, it never forgives, either. Fold in the ever-reliable Streisand effect and Microsoft's ban met the Microslop backlash the way kerosene meets a small fire. The fire swiftly grew so large, fueled by Microslop variants like Micr0sl0p, that Microsoft packed up its stuff and went home. We're still waiting for the Discord to reopen.
Word of this failed Microslop containment quickly spread online, with users – among them, perhaps some exhausted Windows 11 users – all too eager to celebrate corporate missteps and pummel AI slop in one go. "Microslop execs when they realize the name is permanent now," reads one white-hot Reddit post.
This isn't the first or even the second time Microsoft has very squarely taken aim at the slop reputation that sticks to gen AI like feathers on tar. In January, CEO Satya Nadella posted an honest-to-goodness blog defending gen AI and insisting that "we need to get beyond the arguments of slop." In the same post, he reasoned, in so many words, that we also need to find something useful to do with AI already.
Following Sharma's appointment, which one original Xbox co-founder thought to be a sign that the brand will be "sunsetted" amid Microsoft's AI push, newly appointed COO Matt Booty insisted there are "no directives on AI coming down" from on high.
Sharma herself stressed Xbox would not "chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop."
Xbox co-founder says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has "a hammer called gen AI" and "there's a nail with an Xbox logo on it".
