Some users Windows have reported the appearance of some suspicious pop-ups that appear while using Google Chrome.
The window would recommend the use of GPT-4 or setting Bing as your default search engine. The invasiveness of the pop-up alerted several people who had legitimate doubts that it was a symptom linked to the presence of a malware.
In reality, it seems, it’s all part of a rather pushy campaign on the part of Microsoft. As happened last August, the Redmond giant is trying to force users away from Google through “aggressive” pop-ups.
The various messages that appeared on the website demonstrate the concern of the users Reddit and not only that, where they seek reassurance regarding the benign nature of pop-ups.
Windows pop-ups disturb users but they are just advertisements from Microsoft
The site Windows Latest wanted to get to the bottom of the case, analyzing the pop-ups specifically.
These, apparently, are generated by executables BCILauncher.EXE e BingChatInstaller.EXE. Both affected files have been added to C:\Windows\Temp\MUBSTemp in the Windows update of March 13, 2024. However, it should be underlined that not all updated computers present this type of phenomenon.
In response to the many reports and the investigation by Windows Latest, Microsoft confirmed the authorship of the pop-ups, stating that they are shown only once, with the aim of giving users the opportunity to set Bing as their search engine and to access GPT-4, an AI model recently made free with Copilot.
Although Google remains the undisputed ruler of the search engine, Microsoft has been implementing various policies (not always appreciated) for some time to try to bring more and more users to Bing. Despite the integration of AI by the Microsoft engine, at the moment the gap between the two platforms is still abysmal.