Of course, activating Windows 11 in a less-than-legitimate way is nothing new. And the script that Copilot provides instructions for isn’t even a new one—it’s been around for a few years. However, the fact that Microsoft hasn’t created some kind of safety net to keep Copilot from talking people through the exact process is kind of crazy.

A Redditor asked Microsoft’s Copilot if there was a script to activate Windows 11, and the Copilot outlined the instructions. The Copilot AI guided the Redditor through step-by-step instructions on illegally activating Windows copies using the Microsoft Activation Scripts.

Microsoft has a piracy problem, and it's had it for some time. In 2006, the LA Times reported that software piracy had caused the company a loss of around $14 billion that year alone, despite the millions Microsoft spent trying to prevent the copying and distribution of its software and Windows operating system.

Lasso extracted a list of repositories that were public at any point in 2024 and identified the repositories that had since been deleted or set to private. Using Bing’s caching mechanism, the company found more than 20,000 since-private GitHub repositories still had data accessible through Copilot, affecting more than 16,000 organizations.

Thousands of private GitHub repositories, some of which possibly contained credentials and other secrets, are being exposed through Microsoft Copilot, the company’s Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) virtual assistant,