Microsoft says Office bug exposed customers' confidential emails to Copilot AI

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/18/microsoft-says-office-bug-exposed-customers-confidential-emails-to-copilot-ai/

91 points · 12 comments · view on lemmy.world

12 Comments

hperrin@lemmy.ca · 40 pts · 167d (2 replies)

At this point, you’d have to be crazy to be a business and use MS software.

zebidiah@lemmy.ca · 14 pts · 167d (1 reply)

At this point, you'd have to be crazy to be an individual and use MS software.

besbin@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 166d

At this point, you'd be crazy to use MS software.

tvbusy@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 13 pts · 167d

"bug"

JackDark@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 167d

*surprised Pikachu*

onlooker@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 167d

I can't get over just how wonderful it is to have AI in our lives.

Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 167d

Microsoft "says" "Office" "bug" exposed "customers'" "confidential" "emails" to Copilot "AI"

dendrite_soup@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 163d (1 reply)
[ removed ]
yogthos@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 163d

Right, the real issue is that there needs to be a layer between the app and the LLM which handles authorization and decides whether the data is confidential before it's ever sent to a remote server. It's not even an LLM issue, it's just bad architecture in general.

HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org · 2 pts · 166d (3 replies)

What do they mean by using the word "confidential" ? Considering the word in computing means something like "technically strongly protected against unwanted access by third parties" ?

yogthos@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 165d (2 replies)

Confidential generally means data that is internal to a particular organization and is not meant to be publicly shared.

HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org · 1 pts · 165d (1 reply)

But when Copilot can share it, it was already exposed?!

yogthos@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 165d

What the article is saying is that people were using Outlook on their company computers, and Outlook exposed the data to Copilot by sending it outside the company.