{"id":554460,"date":"2026-03-23T02:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T02:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/554460\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T02:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T02:52:09","slug":"analyst-warns-against-using-microsofts-copilot-ai-on-friday-afternoons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/554460\/","title":{"rendered":"Analyst Warns Against Using Microsoft&#8217;s Copilot AI on Friday Afternoons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">Sign up to see the future, today<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">Can\u2019t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech<\/p>\n<p class=\"pw-incontent-excluded article-paragraph skip\">As Microsoft has aggressively pushed its Copilot AI, it\u2019s logged more than a few high-profile errors. Copilot has been found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/861668\/uk-police-microsoft-copilot-error-mistake\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">hallucinating police reports<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/daveywinder\/2025\/05\/14\/new-warning---microsoft-copilot-ai-can-access-restricted-passwords\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">exposing secure passwords<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bleepingcomputer.com\/news\/microsoft\/microsoft-says-bug-causes-copilot-to-summarize-confidential-emails\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">digesting confidential emails<\/a> \u2014 prompting security fears as its use in corporate and government settings becomes more common.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">Dennis Xu, a research analyst at the firm Gartner, went as far as to suggest that companies using Copilot should ban it on Friday afternoons, because by that late juncture in the week, workers might be too checked out to double check its work.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">According <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/2026\/03\/17\/gartner_copilot_security_mitigations\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">to the Register<\/a>, that warning \u2014 half-joking but half-serious \u2014 came at a Gartner panel called \u201cMitigating the Top 5 Microsoft 365 Copilot Security Risks\u201d held in Sydney, Australia this week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">\u201cCopilot makes over-shared documents more accessible,\u201d Xu warned. \u201cThis is not a net new risk, but a known risk amplified by AI.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">Per the Register, Xu spent 30 minutes talking about the five risks, 20 of which were dedicated to Copilot\u2019s penchant for exposing sensitive data obtained after users failed to take the necessary precautions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">Let\u2019s face it. Given the <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/artificial-intelligence\/google-ai-overviews-dangerous-health-advice\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">dangerous hallucinations<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/artificial-intelligence\/ai-lawsuits-chaos-courts-lawyers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reputational blunders<\/a> other models have facilitated, it might not be a bad idea to extend Xu\u2019s Friday-afternoon ban across any AI chatbot, regardless of the model.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">More on AI: <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/artificial-intelligence\/meta-ai-safety-mistake-alarm\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Meta\u2019s Head of AI Safety Just Made a Mistake That May Cause You a Certain Amount of Alarm<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up to see the future, today Can\u2019t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech As&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-554460","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-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}