{"id":294958,"date":"2025-11-19T13:58:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T13:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/294958\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T13:58:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T13:58:13","slug":"microsoft-tries-to-head-off-the-novel-security-risks-of-windows-11-ai-agents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/294958\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft tries to head off the \u201cnovel security risks\u201d of Windows 11 AI agents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Microsoft has been adding AI features to Windows 11 for years, but things have recently entered a new phase, with both generative and so-called \u201cagentic\u201d AI features working their way <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2025\/10\/microsofts-vision-for-ai-pcs-looks-a-lot-like-another-crack-at-cortana\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">deeper into the bedrock<\/a> of the operating system. A new build of Windows 11 released to Windows Insider Program testers yesterday includes a new \u201cexperimental agentic features\u201d toggle in the Settings to support a feature called Copilot Actions, and Microsoft has <a href=\"https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows\/experimental-agentic-features-a25ede8a-e4c2-4841-85a8-44839191dfb3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">published a detailed support article<\/a> detailing more about just how those \u201cexperimental agentic features\u201d will work.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re not familiar, \u201cagentic\u201d is a buzzword that Microsoft has used repeatedly to describe its future ambitions for Windows 11\u2014in plainer language, these agents are meant to accomplish assigned tasks in the background, allowing the user\u2019s attention to be turned elsewhere. Microsoft says it wants agents to be capable of \u201ceveryday tasks like organizing files, scheduling meetings, or sending emails,\u201d and that Copilot Actions should give you \u201can active digital collaborator that can carry out complex tasks for you to enhance efficiency and productivity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But like other kinds of AI, these agents can be prone to error and confabulations and will often proceed as if they know what they\u2019re doing even when they don\u2019t. They also present, in Microsoft\u2019s own words, \u201cnovel security risks,\u201d mostly related to what can happen if an attacker is able to give instructions to one of these agents. As a result, Microsoft\u2019s implementation walks a tightrope between giving these agents access to your files and cordoning them off from the rest of the system.<\/p>\n<p>Possible risks and attempted fixes<\/p>\n<p>                        <img width=\"1204\" height=\"951\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AIComponents-11-17.png\" class=\"fullwidth full\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>\n      For now, these \u201cexperimental agentic features\u201d are optional, only available in early test builds of Windows 11, and off by default.<\/p>\n<p>          Credit:<\/p>\n<p>          Microsoft<\/p>\n<p>For example, AI agents running on a PC will be given their own user accounts separate from your personal account, ensuring that they don\u2019t have permission to change everything on the system and giving them their own \u201cdesktop\u201d to work with that won\u2019t interfere with what you\u2019re working with on your screen. Users need to approve requests for their data, and \u201call actions of an agent are observable and distinguishable from those taken by a user.\u201d Microsoft also says agents need to be able to produce logs of their activities and \u201cshould provide a means to supervise their activities,\u201d including showing users a list of actions they\u2019ll take to accomplish a multi-step task.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft has been adding AI features to Windows 11 for years, but things have recently entered a new&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-294958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}