Microsoft\u2019s head of security for AI, Neta Haiby, accidentally revealed confidential messages about Walmart\u2019s use of Microsoft\u2019s AI tools during a Build talk that was disrupted by protesters. <\/p>\n
The Build livestream was muted and the camera pointed down, but the session resumed moments later after the protesters were escorted out. In the aftermath, Haiby then accidentally switched to Microsoft Teams while sharing her screen, revealing confidential internal messages about Walmart\u2019s upcoming use of Microsoft\u2019s Entra and AI gateway services.<\/p>\n
Haiby was co-hosting a Build session on best security practices for AI, alongside Sarah Bird, Microsoft\u2019s head of responsible AI, when two former Microsoft employees disrupted the talk to protest against the company\u2019s cloud contracts with the Israeli government.<\/p>\n
\u201cSarah, you are whitewashing the crimes of Microsoft in Palestine, how dare you talk about responsible AI when Microsoft is fueling the genocide in Palestine,\u201d shouted Hossam Nasr, an organizer with the protest group No Azure for Apartheid<\/a>, and a former Microsoft employee who was fired for holding a vigil outside Microsoft\u2019s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza.<\/p>\n Walmart is one of Microsoft\u2019s biggest corporate customers, and already uses the company\u2019s Azure OpenAI service for some of its AI work. \u201cWalmart is ready to rock and roll with Entra Web and AI Gateway,\u201d says one of Microsoft\u2019s cloud solution architects in the Teams messages. The chat session also quoted a Walmart AI engineer, saying: \u201cMicrosoft is WAY ahead of Google with AI security. We are excited to go down this path with you.\u201d<\/p>\n We asked Microsoft to comment on this protest and the Teams messages, but the company did not respond in time for publication.<\/p>\n Both of the protesters involved in this latest Microsoft Build disruption were former Microsoft employees, with Vaniya Agrawal appearing alongside Nasr. Agrawal interrupted Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates<\/a>, former CEO Steve Ballmer, and CEO Satya Nadella later during the company\u2019s 50th anniversary event last month. Agrawal was dismissed<\/a> shortly after putting in her two weeks\u2019 notice at Microsoft before the protest, according to an email seen by The Verge.<\/p>\n This latest protest comes days after Microsoft announced last week that it had conducted an internal review and used an unnamed external firm to assess how its technology is used in the war in Gaza. Microsoft says that its relationship with Israel\u2019s Ministry of Defense (IMOD) is \u201cstructured as a standard commercial relationship\u201d and that it has \u201cfound no evidence that Microsoft\u2019s Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with our terms of service or our AI Code of Conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft\u2019s head of security for AI, Neta Haiby, accidentally revealed confidential messages about Walmart\u2019s use of Microsoft\u2019s AI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,507,45128,12,326,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-119455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-microsoft","11":"tag-microsoft-build","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-tech","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114545177551574189","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}