404 Media reports that Microsoft hired hundreds of contractors to evaluate how well its Copilot AI executes image-editing prompts, including sexually explicit and nonconsensual requests involving real women, children's cartoon characters, and upskirt-style images. The contractors say Microsoft instructed them to judge output quality using their 'intuition,' not to assess the ethics of the prompts themselves, and faces in uploaded photos reportedly remain uncensored.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-28
Microsoft launched its updated Surface Laptop and Surface Pro at Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit, powered by Snapdragon X2 Plus chips, without an AMD option. Surface CVP Brett Ostrum told Windows Central the company's limited device portfolio forces selective processor choices, while insisting Microsoft still values its AMD partnership.
techspot.com
· 2026-09-28
Executives and researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Meta said artificial intelligence systems could soon begin improving themselves at a pace beyond human ability to monitor or control. They called for stronger oversight mechanisms to be put in place before that happens.
wsj.com
· 2026-09-28
Church and community groups have pressed Microsoft to commit roughly 1% of its data center construction costs to local investment, but company representatives at community meetings have struggled to answer detailed questions beyond prepared 'good neighbor' talking points. Microsoft has acknowledged that its $229 million in 2024 employee-matched charitable giving across 29,000 nonprofits isn't sufficient, without specifying larger commitments.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-28
A teenage security researcher named Faav says he used a custom AI tool called Antares to probe Microsoft's internal Titan analytics platform and discovered an API endpoint that accepted raw SQL queries without requiring authentication. He reportedly traced subdomains and an archived configuration file via the Wayback Machine to map the database's 56 tables, which he says held roughly 17 trillion rows and 25,000 employee records.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-28
Boston Consulting Group research cited by WIRED found 22% of surveyed managers say their organizations have already added AI agents to corporate org charts, treating them as coworkers rather than mere tools. The trend follows platforms like Microsoft's Copilot and Google's Gemini for Workspace, and Microsoft's June launch of an agent called Scout, designed to autonomously handle tasks such as rescheduling meetings and drafting emails.
wired.com
· 2026-09-28
Microsoft is piloting an Excel update that lets a single cell hold lists and arrays instead of just one value, breaking from the spreadsheet's traditional one-cell, one-value design. The feature is available to Microsoft 365 Insiders in the Excel Beta Channel on Windows and Mac, letting users create lists via Insert > List or Ctrl+J, and reference or filter individual items within them using formulas.
techspot.com
· 2026-09-28
Microsoft has cut close to half the staff at World's Edge, the studio behind the Age of Empires franchise, as part of a reorganization placing it under Activision. Former employees say the studio's next project was canceled during the transition. The cuts are part of 268 job losses across Xbox, contributing to Microsoft's planned 3,200 layoffs this financial year.
techspot.com
· 2026-09-27
Apple has unveiled its first foldable smartphone, the iPhone Duo, drawing comparisons online to Microsoft's Surface Duo foldable line. Critics have accused Apple of copying the name, but Apple previously used 'Duo' for its PowerBook Duo laptop in 1992, predating Microsoft's product by decades.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-27
Microsoft is introducing a feature allowing single cells in Excel to hold lists and arrays of data, rather than just individual values. The change marks a structural update to the spreadsheet program, which has not previously supported this kind of nested data within one cell.
slashdot.org
· 2026-09-26
U.S. stocks posted a volatile week as Treasury yields hit multidecade highs, with the 10-year topping 5.2% and the 30-year touching 5.5%. Despite rising rate-hike expectations after strong manufacturing data and comments from Fed Governor Michael Barr, the Nasdaq gained 2%, the S&P 500 rose 1%, and the Dow added 0.3%, lifted by strength in Meta and Microsoft shares.
cnbc.com
· 2026-09-26
Microsoft Surface CVP Brett Ostrum told Windows Central that new laptops meeting the Copilot+ hardware requirements are no longer being labeled with the Copilot+ badge, even though the underlying NPU and performance specs remain. Devices like the upcoming Nvidia RTX Spark N1X and Microsoft's own Project Zenith are shipping without the branding, and Microsoft says it's scaling back Copilot's visible presence in Windows 11 while promising better performance and reliability, including optimization for 8GB RAM systems.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-26
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