Windows 11 is in the firing line once again, and this time some recent updates to documentation around AI agents have provoked fresh concerns about how these entities will work in the OS – and what threats they might pose.
This latest controversy actually stems from an old support document about ‘Experimental Agentic Features’ (well, not that old – it was published in October 2025), which Microsoft updated a couple of weeks ago.
Of course, Microsoft has been banging on about these possible new attack vectors that might be leveraged via such AI systems since last year. Which is to say that the systems it has been creating for Windows 11 have very much been built with these threats in mind – so hopefully its defenses are going to be tight enough to deflect any such attempted intrusions.
This should keep these agents contained, and even if compromised, they should theoretically only have limited means of exploiting the system. Of course, the proof will be in the pudding of this system being used in the real world, and the trouble is if we look at the collapsed cake that was Recall – or at least this AI feature’s initial design – that doesn’t give us much confidence.
Read it and weep?
However, as PC Gamer notes, the biggest issue is that when talking about those novel security risks (cross-prompt injections) and potential nastiness that could be leveraged therein, like data exfiltration – stealing your files – Microsoft has added a new caution in its recent revision of this document. Namely that: “We recommend you read through this information and understand the security implications of enabling an agent on your computer.”
That’s the most sinister sentence in this document when it comes to the content relating to security. What is this saying? That this is some sort of get-out clause for Microsoft, and you’ve got to weigh up the risks on your own by poring through documents?
Now, you may think that’s reading too much into this, and that’s fair enough, but it has certainly sent alarm bells ringing in the articles – and online comments – that are now popping up around this.
It certainly doesn’t feel very comforting to read that, but then again, this is early testing for AI agents. Copilot Actions is in a purely experimental phase right now, in fact, so another way of looking at this would be: what do you expect? Sign up now and there probably are some very real risks involved. Just imagine you were using an ‘experimental’ operating system, and it went down in flames, taking your files with it in the ensuing fireball – you’d only have yourself to blame, wouldn’t you?
So, the message is to proceed at your own risk, which at this experimental stage is fair enough really. However, my actual worry here is when these AI agents come to a full implementation in the finished version of Windows 11, can we trust that Microsoft will have realized that in a watertight way?
What if there’s a hole in this system somewhere? Given that Microsoft is seemingly breaking even basic things in Windows 11 with some regularity, I can see why folks might be concerned here. I’m nervous, after all, and if something does go wrong, it could be disastrous for the involved users who are running AI agents – and for Microsoft’s reputation, too.
The software giant can’t afford an episode where AI goes rogue in some wild way, as it will be difficult to recover the trust in Windows 11’s agents if an unfortunate episode occurs along these lines.
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