Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber Surely, if you consider that an AI agent is an user, then those agents should have the same liabilities and responsibility as other users? And considering them as employees means that the employer should take the same responsibility for their actions? So, sue the employers for their users' theft of copyright data, and the agents' makers for the same? Either they are tools or users, you can't have it both ways.
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@cwebber That's hilarious. Who's going to *make them* purchase instead of pirate it? The folks that taught them to not lie, er, I mean hallucinate?
Yeah. Give your head a shake.
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber I still haven't found a medium-large org bulk buying co-slop. Has anyone?
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber LOL they’ve finally found a way to make money from AI



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@cwebber That's hilarious. Who's going to *make them* purchase instead of pirate it? The folks that taught them to not lie, er, I mean hallucinate?
Yeah. Give your head a shake.
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber All Children of God must obey the law!!
https://www.heise.de/en/news/AI-a-Child-of-God-Anthropic-meeting-with-several-church-leaders-11253800.html -
Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber isn't that obvious?
If AI has the chance to lead to fewer humans having to use Microsoft products, there needs to be some compensation, right? -
Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber I can't read the article without creating an account, and I'm not in the mood right now.
But tell me... Was that article published on 1 April, by any chance?

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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber fuck Microsoft -
Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber they don't need the license if it is for training purpose.
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber let him cook. They are going to figure out how to properly identify an AI agent, and then we use that same method to make AI agents pay taxes.

If they take all our jobs, let's at least make them pay for it.

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@cwebber I want to suggest that AI agents also pay tax.
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@expertenkommision_cyberunfall @cwebber naw. companiesshould pay taxes on their AI usage fo fund UBI.
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber - if AI agents can buy software licenses they should pay taxes as well.
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Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4
*deep breath in*
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA of fucking course lmao
@cwebber the agents trained on stolen code?
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@cwebber Haha yeah, or steal or pirate the software like any other AI steals and pirates content from the internet.
AI really makes them come up with the weirdest ideas ...
Anyone thought that in order to purchase a license one must have funds to do so. Would you provide your account or credit card data to an AI?
Didn't think so.@Brokar @cwebber anyway, majority of software in terms of micro services is running in Linux using open source tools, even copilot cli is written in node-js. So this is just smoking mirrors. Agents will run in docker or whatever container (tbh they should be there anyway) and no seats needed. In fact agents work with text files, they don’t give a shit about IDE. So if he implying they shall play for seats for paid SDKs that will not hold at court I believe, or companies will shift to opensource alternatives and pay for enterprise support where needed, and that’s usually seatless. Et the end who will be beaten, are the big software houses, who sells such proprietary SDKs
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@wordshaper @cwebber per token.
As in, you have to use the tokens for the AI still, but also pay a separate software license for every token you spend.
Shit, I probably shouldn't give them ideas.
@EdCates @wordshaper @cwebber They probably have already worse ones.
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@cwebber That's hilarious. Who's going to *make them* purchase instead of pirate it? The folks that taught them to not lie, er, I mean hallucinate?
Yeah. Give your head a shake.
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@cwebber That's hilarious. Who's going to *make them* purchase instead of pirate it? The folks that taught them to not lie, er, I mean hallucinate?
Yeah. Give your head a shake.
@AG7GM @cwebber as AI strategist I have a solution, so let’s have agentic AI, let’s say theirs suggestion 20 of them, they do the “monkey work” and when needed some seated pricing interactions, they delegate to single dedicated agent that does what’s needed. The agentic orchestration on top of it shall be fairly trivial. It is really easy to use it against them. I believe AI can be helping tool to humans and I mean helping tool not replacement. Just another fancy tool in someone’s toolset.
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@blogdiva @cwebber Other recent example include a fight between licenses and CPU architecture. A database server (cough Oracle) is ridiculously expensive once things go beyond two CPU sockets? Well, IBM would sell you a special two socket incredibly multi core CPU system for a wincingly high but not quite as high price as licensing four SQL cores.
Of course, that only works for one release, the licensing catches up, and cores per socket become limited etc etc.
@syllopsium @blogdiva @cwebber I think at least MS fixed this as there is some licence complicated calculation based on cores not sockets. This happened already in I think SQL Server 2016 I believe Oracle does have the same
