Edge browser sending users’ viewed images to Microsoft
Microsoft’s Edge browser sends images viewed by users to the company’s servers, Neowin reports.
The publication has discovered that the Edge browser’s “super-resolution” feature, which enhances photo quality, requires that Microsoft be sent the image URLs to work its magic.
AI-powered super-resolution improves the clarity, sharpness, lighting and contrast of images on the web.
Microsoft first announced the feature in May 2022 and launched a version for videos earlier this year.
The latter uses the on-device processing power of graphics cards with AI upscaling capabilities.
However, according to Neowin, the company only clarified that the image super-resolution feature uses a different approach in recent Edge Canary updates.
Before this admission, some users had been under the impression that the enhancement was also performed on-device.
However, clicking on the question mark icon next to the feature in Edge will show users that it uploads the images to support super-resolution.
Aside from giving the company a peek at the images you are viewing, a major issue is that super-resolution is enabled by default.
If you are a Microsoft Edge user and don’t want to send every image you look at to the company’s servers, you will find a toggle to switch it off within your Edge settings.
The specific section setting you should look for is “Enhance images in Microsoft Edge”, which can be found under Privacy>Search>Services.
Neowin said Microsoft plans to update the feature to allow users to exclude specific websites’ images from being sent to its servers.
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