AI has learned to find software bugs faster than people can, and the programmes that pay for them are straining. In a single week, the three biggest went three different ways.
Microsoft paid out a record sum. Apple slammed the door on how many bugs a researcher can file. Google quietly repriced the whole thing. All three were reacting to the same flood.
Microsoft paid more than $20m to 562 researchers over its latest bounty year, The Register reported, a record on both counts. A year earlier it was about $17m to 344. Microsoft blamed the “growing use of AI” in security research for the surge.
But it is not a clean comparison: the company also widened what counts as a bug halfway through the year.
Apple slams the door
