Microsoft Edge now has an AI-powered scareware blocker

Microsoft has started rolling out a new scareware blocker in its Edge browser this week. The AI-powered feature runs on Windows PCs and can identify and block existing scams, and even detect new and emerging ones thanks to a local machine learning model.

“Scareware blocker adds a new, first line of defense to help protect the users exposed to a new scam if it attempts to open a full screen page. Scareware blocker uses a machine learning model that runs on the local computer,” explains the Microsoft Edge team in a blog post. “The model uses computer vision to compare full screen pages to thousands of sample scams that the scam-fighting community shared with us. The model runs locally, without saving or sending images to the cloud.”

Finally, a practical use for AI in the daily lives of people.

.....now if only they didn't need to scan all my messages to use it.