Critics scoff after Microsoft warns AI feature can infect machines and pilfer data

Integration of Copilot Actions into Windows is off by default, but for how long?

See full article...

 

[angrynb]

no shit

 

[J.R.G]

"Integration of Copilot Actions into Windows is off by default, but for how long?"

More importantly, how long before you can't turn it off?

 

[Dietche]

In before a zero-day is vibe-coded to prompt inject Co-Pilot to stealth upload ALLLLLLL the phat lewt from millions of Win 11 machines in 3.... 2....

 

[SixDegrees]

Turns out AI brings LOTS of surprises to the table:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/19/tech/folotoy-kumma-ai-bear-scli-intl

 

[darkowl]

So… how are you liking Windows Recall?

 

[RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha]

"Integration of Copilot Actions into Windows is off by default, but for how long?"

More importantly, how long before you can't turn it off?

Oh you can turn it off, as long as your subscription is current or for a fee. But thanks to wankers in DC, you likely have to Opt Out, no longer Opt In.

 

[Lexus Lunar Lorry]

“As these capabilities are introduced, AI models still face functional limitations in terms of how they behave and occasionally may hallucinate and produce unexpected outputs,” Microsoft said. “Additionally, agentic AI applications introduce novel security risks, such as cross-prompt injection (XPIA), where malicious content embedded in UI elements or documents can override agent instructions, leading to unintended actions like data exfiltration or malware installation.”

Colt's Manufacturing Company has introduced a new setting that causes its guns to occasionally and unpredictably fire a bullet backwards at the user. This setting is currently disabled by default. Security teams have discovered that it is possible for one's targets to remotely induce the fire-backwards behavior by doing the chicken dance. Colt recommends that only experienced users enable the new setting for now.

Going forward, Colt plans to enable the new setting by default for all of its firearms.

 

[coonwhiz]

Oh you can turn it off, as long as your subscription is current or for a fee. But thanks to wankers in DC, you likely have to Opt Out, no longer Opt In.

I know of a way to turn it off, and it involves a baseball bat.

 

[el_oscuro]

I know of a way to turn it off, and it involves a baseball bat.

I just buy my PCs from vendors that don't have it to begin with like System76.

 

[grommit!]

Microsoft’s warning, one critic said, amounts to little more than a CYA (short for cover your ass), a legal maneuver that attempts to shield a party from liability.

Looking forward to people claiming they didn't send these types of emails because "the AI did it"

View: https://bsky.app/profile/eliothiggins.bsky.social/post/3m5yh2gjlj22b

 

[Fatesrider]

I know of a way to turn it off, and it involves a baseball bat.

I think it's easier on the hardware to simply invite penguins into your home and give Microsoft the upright middle finger salute.

I mean, why waste a perfectly functional device just because fuckwits in Redmond want to turn your property into theirs and snoop at all the datas you have in it when it's simple and easy to reclaim your property and still use it like you want to without that hassle?

 

[Bilateralrope]

So… how are you liking Windows Recall?

That was bad.

This will be worse.

Oh you can turn it off, as long as your subscription is current or for a fee. But thanks to wankers in DC, you likely have to Opt Out, no longer Opt In.

I wonder how far along GDPR enforcement will need to get before Europe gets to turn it off.

 

[Tridus]

Microsoft: "Our security culture change started at the top, with Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Satya Nadella mandating that security be the company’s top priority. His directive to employees is clear: when security and other priorities conflict, security must always take precedence"

Also Microsoft: "Here's this new feature that comes with so many gaping security holes that we have an entire article telling you about them! AI sure is great!"

This bubble desperately needs to pop.

 

[anonymouschicken]

Lunacy. I have a plex server at home that I use for streaming my personal media collection. For years, it was running Windows because that's the only OS I knew. Very recently I got fed up with MS's war against local accounts, the insistence on OneDrive, CoPilot, and now this insanity, so I pulled the trigger and switched to Ubuntu. Huge improvement, and I'm considering doing the same for all my computers. Maybe it's finally the year of the linux desktop.

 

[itsaunixsystem]

We can trust Microsoft as much as you can trust OneDrive won't copy your files to the cloud or install itself randomly again after a Windows Update.

 

[Deadwing]

Weird. I looked all over Linux Mint for a dangerous AI agent like Windows has, but I couldn't find it. Windows is just so advanced!!!

/s

 

[mikner]

Microsoft security standing is crazy. From one side it has unleashed a myriad of automatic security measures (Forced Updates, File blocking, Defender 365 etc) that make the everyday experience using Windows annoying and irritating to downright head banging while on the other side, deploys Copilot features with known security holes and buggy features on mostly inexperienced and unprepared users without any concern to actually prepare or protect them

 

[Got Nate?]

perform “everyday tasks like organizing files, scheduling meetings, or sending emails,”

I want my computer to leave the files where I put them, and let the existing indexed search surface it when i'm looking for it. I don't want my computer to gaslight me by moving my files some other place.
I want to be in the meeting scheduling loop. Tools already exist to identify time conflicts and find an agreeable time without an LLM in the works.
I want to be in the email sending loop. If my name is on it, I better have written it.

Is there any value here at all?

 

[Bilateralrope]

Microsoft security standing is crazy. From one side it has unleashed a myriad of automatic security measures (Forced Updates, File blocking, Defender 365 etc) that make the everyday experience using Windows annoying and irritating to downright head banging while on the other side, deploys Copilot features with known security holes and buggy features on mostly inexperienced and unprepared users without any concern to actually prepare or protect them

Most of those annoying automatic security features make sense when you realize that Microsoft is trying to keep the OS secure, even when people using the computer don't know what they are doing. Including the people who click yes, or no, to something without reading it.

Then they throw AI at it, where the only competent option is to turn if off. If that remains an option.

 

[Random_stranger]

Microsoft: "Our security culture change started at the top, with Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Satya Nadella mandating that security be the company’s top priority. His directive to employees is clear: when security and other priorities conflict, security must always take precedence"

Also Microsoft: "Here's this new feature that comes with so many gaping security holes that we have an entire article telling you about them! AI sure is great!"

This bubble desperately needs to pop.

You misunderstood. This is corporate-speak. When they talk about "security", they mean "the security of the company's profits", NOT the security of the suckers users' data.

 

[Bilateralrope]

I want my computer to leave the files where I put them, and let the existing indexed search surface it when i'm looking for it. I don't want my computer to gaslight me by moving my files some other place.
I want to be in the meeting scheduling loop. Tools already exist to identify time conflicts and find an agreeable time without an LLM in the works.
I want to be in the email sending loop. If my name is on it, I better have written it.

Is there any value here at all?

I can think of one thing I've done on my computer that might have been more competent if I could tell an Ai to do it. I had a lot of files named in a specific way and wanted to remove the starting part of the filename.

What I did was spend 15 minutes learning how to make a Powershell command that did it. A competent Ai might have saved me that time.


But nothing about this sounds competent.

 

[famousringo]

Any CISO who approves this stuff should be put in solitary confinement with only GPT for company.

 

[Purpleivan]

"Integration of Copilot Actions into Windows is off by default, but for how long?"

More importantly, how long before you can't turn it off?

I'm pretty certain that it'll be the same day my decades of inertia is finally overcome and I switch to some flavour Linux.

 

[Purpleivan]

Colt's Manufacturing Company has introduced a new setting that causes its guns to occasionally and unpredictably fire a bullet backwards at the user. This setting is currently disabled by default. Security teams have discovered that it is possible for one's targets to remotely induce the fire-backwards behavior by doing the chicken dance. Colt recommends that only experienced users enable the new setting for now.

Going forward, Colt plans to enable the new setting by default for all of its firearms.

I don't like what's prompting them, but I am enjoying this series of analogous posts.

 

[balthazarr]

... Is there any value here at all?

There's billions, if not trillions, of dollars of value here... just not for you, me and regular users, and just not anything that will last - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/21/are-we-in-an-ai-bubble.html

The social media world is already awash with AI Slop - no doubt it's creeping into the corporate world, too, but now that creep will become a tsunami.

JFC we live in the stupidest timeline.

 

[ReaderBot]

I want my computer to leave the files where I put them, and let the existing indexed search surface it when i'm looking for it. I don't want my computer to gaslight me by moving my files some other place.
I want to be in the meeting scheduling loop. Tools already exist to identify time conflicts and find an agreeable time without an LLM in the works.
I want to be in the email sending loop. If my name is on it, I better have written it.

Is there any value here at all?

Do you mean for users, or for shareholders?

 

[BCGeiger]

"Integration of Copilot Actions into Windows is off by default, but for how long?"

More importantly, how long before you can't turn it off?

I’m thinking the same thing about Apple Intelligence. It’s why I’m setting up a Linux system. A pox on both their houses.

This propensity for hallucinations, as the behavior has come to be called, means users can’t trust the output of Copilot, Gemini, Claude, or any other AI assistant and instead must independently confirm it.

If I have to verify every word these LLM AI systems generate then WTF would I want one running on my system? It isn't helping me in any way. It isn’t saving me any work.

 

[Viki Ai]

Turns out AI brings LOTS of surprises to the table:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/19/tech/folotoy-kumma-ai-bear-scli-intl

Wow! Particularly the where to find knives bit. Mainly because I recall a scifi short story from the 90's (IIRC) about an AI-driven toy bear that was doing just that, including convincing its child to equip its magnetic hands with knives. The story 'AI' was just a voice box, so it couldn't actually articulate or move the knives, but the point was the implicit threat to the parents when they found the knife-enhanced bear where it had instructed the child to position it for maximum effect.

In the story, the father's solution was a nice long cycle in the washing machine, and the kid just went back to happily pretending their bear could talk afterwards.

 

[Anton Longshot]

Not super long ago a famous guy (I suppose everyone knows who) claimed email spam would get fixed soon.
He was wrong but maybe...maybe the crazy stuff MS is pushing right now is a ploy to render email useless/worthless. EMAIL SPAM PROBLEM FIXED.

OMG I discovered a conspiracy! /s <<<<

 

[bob_page_cousin]

Hey girl, you're so agentic!

 

[WereCatf]

With the push from various companies for agentic web browsers and the general populace just not understanding how dangerous those are -- I mean, they literally suffer from these exact same issues that Microsoft is warning about -- and thus falling for the hype, we are only scratching at the surface of the massive shit show that's about to come as all these agentic things spread. Just think about someone e.g. fooling an agentic browser to fool the OS-integrated AI agent into installing malware -- it's practically guaranteed to happen!

 

[balthazarr]

I’m thinking the same thing about Apple Intelligence. It’s why I’m setting up a Linux system. A pox on both their houses.


If I have to verify every word these LLM AI systems generate then WTF would I want one running on my system? It isn't helping me in any way. It isn’t saving me any work.

It's so much worse that than, though. It's not just 'let me double check this email before it goes out, in case there's any "hallucination" in it' - and more, 'unplug the computer there's a virus that uploading stuff, mangling everything I write, deleting and moving files around and... oh, that's just the computer being agentic. Nothing to worry about, then.' /s

 

[ralphnobody]

Another reason I abandoned Windows for home use, in favor of Linux;

• Force 365 and subscription model down throat of all users.
• Force experimental AI on all users, even when unasked for.
• Kill backwards compatibility and make developer experience hostile.
• Make Azure and 365 security a running joke.

So who exactly does Satya Nadella believes will want to continue a partnership with Microsoft?

 

[balthazarr]

With the push from various companies for agentic web browsers and the general populace just not understanding how dangerous those are -- I mean, they literally suffer from these exact same issues that Microsoft is warning about -- and thus falling for the hype, we are only scratching at the surface of the massive shit show that's about to come as all these agentic things spread. Just think about someone e.g. fooling an agentic browser to fool the OS-integrated AI agent into installing malware -- it's practically guaranteed to happen!

Why install the malware when it's already built-in and turned on by default?

We'll soon be back to the days of the ILOVEYOU and Melissa worms - where all it will take is receiving an email or opening a webpage and the computer is "infected" (read: interprets the malevolent commands and the oh-so-helpful-agentic-BS leaps into action - maybe, if you're lucky, popping up a confirmation dialog before enacting the malicious commands.)

 

[Viki Ai]

I know of a way to turn it off, and it involves a baseball bat.

Been there, have the T-shirt.
Literally: https://www.eviscerati.org/comics/hd/2007/03/truism/
(They don't seem to sell that comic on a T-shirt anymore, which is a pity because my current one is getting a bit thin from over-wearing it).

 

[CelicaGT]

This article is timely. Currently fleshing out a fresh install of Ubuntu+Steam on a Dell G15 gaming laptop. I figured I’d have more problems than I did (zero, zero problems). Plan to do my desktop next weekend then I’ll finally be done with MS having cancelled 365 and XBLive subs earlier this month. My only direct contact I’ll have with MS products will be at work.

 

[Black Eagle]

Microsoft recommended users enable Copilot Actions only “if you understand the security implications outlined.”

Does anyone fully understand the security implications of agentic AI at this point?

 

[ImportantDrilling]

Hey girl, you're so agentic!

Gretchen, stop trying to make agentic happen

 

[nwexplorer]

I can think of one thing I've done on my computer that might have been more competent if I could tell an Ai to do it. I had a lot of files named in a specific way and wanted to remove the starting part of the filename.

What I did was spend 15 minutes learning how to make a Powershell command that did it. A competent Ai might have saved me that time.

You could also do a batch file rename in Total Commander-- it is free.