When the cofounder of a giant tech outfit like Salesforce publicly disses a rival product, it's worth noting what they say. And Benioff certainly had some choice words about Microsoft's big AI push.

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.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently took a swipe at Microsoft’s Copilot AI, likening it to the much-maligned Clippy, Microsoft’s discontinued digital assistant from the 1990s. During an interview at Salesforce's Dreamforce event in San Francisco,