Microsoft clarifies Windows 11 AI agents need permission to read your files

Last October, Microsoft released a new support page for experimental agentic features, which details how AI agents and agent connectors work with Windows 11, Copilot, and more. Recently, this page was updated to indicate that AI agents could access the contents of six selected folders in Windows 11 (Documents, Downloads, Desktop, Music, Pictures, Videos), which naturally raised concerns.

Now, Microsoft specifies that you will need to allow AI agents to access the contents of these six folders. When selecting permissions, you will have the options “Always allow” (the agent can access these folders whenever they need), “Ask every time” (you will be prompted when the agent needs to access the folders), and “Never allow” (the request will be denied to the agent every time).

Note that it is not possible to allow individual access settings per folder. The setting applies to all six folders or none of them.

To change the setting, open the Settings app in Windows 11, then go to System > AI Components > Agents. Select the appropriate AI agent from the list, navigate to Files then select one of the three permission settings from the drop-down menu.