First, tech giant Microsoft (MSFT) was frantically trying to shoehorn artificial intelligence (AI) into just about everything it made. Now it seems to be pulling back to the point where it is actually starting to warn about some of the dangers involved in AI. Specifically, Microsoft recently pointed out that AI is proving a valuable weapon in cyberattacks, more specifically a “force multiplier.” This won Microsoft some friends, as investors sent shares jumping up nearly 3% in Monday afternoon’s trading.
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Microsoft Threat Intelligence released a report that noted that cybercriminals are putting AI to use across just about every stage of cyberattacks. AI is becoming what employers assured an anxious public AI would be for them: a way to take the current crop of users and make them better, not replace them outright.
AI is currently being used to write convincing phishing emails, as well as offer summaries about stolen data. Translation services take those convincing phishing emails and make them viable in multiple languages. Even coding is a breeze; AI can analyze current code for errors, generate code outright, build scripts, or even set up entire threat infrastructures, reports note. This makes AI a force to be reckoned with, and elevates threats accordingly.
A Virtual Mouse
The idea that the next Xbox would basically be a gaming PC with a more specialized user interface had a few flaws in it from the word go. One of the biggest was that not every game would work well with the gamepad control interface. Many do, of course, but certainly not all of them. Microsoft may have a way to bridge that gap by turning the gamepad into a kind of mouse with the Gamepad Cursor option.
Activating the mode allows the gamepad’s left stick to work like a mouse would, scrolling around the screen. The right stick, meanwhile, functions as a more up and down function. The feature is currently being tested with Xbox Insiders, and if it works as advertised, it could go a long way toward bridging the gap in the next generation of Xbox consoles.
Is Microsoft a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on MSFT stock based on 35 Buys and three Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 4.37% loss in its share price over the past year, the average MSFT price target of $580.84 per share implies 52.21% upside potential.
