Microsoft has started rolling out an AI-powered “Scareware Blocker” for its Edge browser on Windows PCs. When enabled, the security feature acts as the “first line of defense” against new and emerging scams.

Microsoft Edge's Scareware blocker is a local AI model designed to help users avoid annoying and dangerous full screen pop-ups while browsing the web.

Let’s say you want to uninstall Microsoft’s Edge browser. Fair enough, Windows is supposed to allow you at least some control over your programs, and most people use Chrome. So you search Bing for “How to uninstall Edge,

To do so, open Edge on your Windows PC, tap on the three horizontal dots on the top right of the screen and click on Settings. On the page that appears, click on “Privacy, search and, services” from the left panel and under ‘Security’, turn on the toggle named ‘Scareware Blocker’. Now, restart Edge and you are good to go.

If you're using Bing on the Microsoft Edge browser, you'll be greeted by a new banner if you search for Chrome Web Browser.

Microsoft Edge 133 is now rolling out globally, and it ships with several improvements, including a new scareware blocker feature. In addition, Microsoft is updating the backend of the Downloads UI with performance improvements.