Microsoft expands Edge extension automation to handle AI code surge

Microsoft has acknowledged that the surge in AI-assisted development is overwhelming its review processes for Microsoft Edge browser extensions. The ease of using AI to generate code has led to a significant increase in the volume of extension submissions, creating a bottleneck in the manual verification and security auditing stages.

To address this, Microsoft is expanding its automated verification mechanisms to handle repetitive checks, such as identifying known policy violations and security flaws. This shift aims to allow human reviewers to focus on more complex cases. Additionally, the company is updating its ‘Featured’ badge system, which will now re-evaluate extensions every 15 days based on approximately 60 quality metrics.

This trend is not unique to Microsoft; Google has also reported increased review times for Chrome Web Store extensions. Experts warn that as AI lowers the barrier to entry for coding, the resulting influx of software increases the risk of security vulnerabilities and malicious extensions being introduced into corporate environments.