Episode 768: You’ll have to talk to my agent

·1 hr 5 min·5 clips

Microsoft's Navjot Virk reveals an AI overhaul for Windows that will grant Copilot read/write access to your personal folders.

The episode opens with hosts John Honeyball, Darren Graham-Smith, and Lee Grant introducing the week's tech news. Lee leads with a story on Microsoft's 'agentic Windows' initiative, detailing comments from corporate VP Navjot Virk about integrating AI agents into the Windows 11 taskbar. The discussion centers on 'Ask Copilot' and its need for file access. The hosts then cover the negative reaction from developers on social media, prompting a response from Windows lead Pavan Davaluri. Lee explains Microsoft's blog post on experimental agentic features, noting they are off by default but, once enabled by an admin, grant AI read/write access to key user folders for all device users. The team debates the security implications and user trust. John argues that for an AI assistant to be effective, it must be mobile, highlighting Microsoft's lack of a mobile platform. Darren presents a story on Inception Point AI, a startup that uses AI to generate and narrate 3000 podcast episodes weekly, amassing 400,000 subscribers quickly. The hosts debate the quality and ethics of AI-generated content. John then covers a major Cloudflare outage caused by a database permission change that doubled a feature file size, crashing systems globally. Darren shares a story about Fireflies.ai, a company that admitted its early 'AI' meeting assistant was actually humans taking notes manually. The episode includes nibs on rapid smartphone depreciation, Tim Cook's potential departure from Apple, new Copilot features for Office 365, and Chinese espionage allegations via LinkedIn. It concludes with a 'Hot Hardware' segment on the Logitech Muse, a spatial pen for Apple Vision Pro.

As heard by us

A grounded discussion of AI agents, human checking, and what Windows may ask users to trust.

Microsoft's push to bring more AI agents into the Windows 11 taskbar gives this PC Pro episode a clear point of pressure: an operating system promising AI help while the panel keeps asking who checks the output.

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Why you'd press play

You want a skeptical look at Windows AI agents before they become part of the everyday OS furniture.

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