Today's **Patch Tuesday** saw **Microsoft Corp.** release an unprecedented 570 security updates for its **Windows** operating systems and other software. This figure represents almost three times the number of vulnerabilities addressed in last month's record-setting release.  Microsoft attributes this burgeoning patch count to the significant role of artificial intelligence in aiding vulnerability discoveries. Nearly 60 of the vulnerabilities patched in July were rated as "critical." These flaws could allow attackers or malware to seize remote control of a Windows device with minimal or no user interaction. Microsoft also addressed three zero-day flaws, two of which are already actively being exploited in the wild. Two of these zero-day weaknesses, **CVE-2026-56155** (an **Active Directory Federation Services** bug) and **CVE-2026-56164** (a **Microsoft SharePoint** vulnerability), allow an attacker to elevate user privileges on a Windows system. These are among approximately 250 other elevation of privilege flaws fixed this month. **CVE-2026-50661** is a security feature bypass in **Windows BitLocker**. This vulnerability could allow attackers with physical access to a device to gain access to encrypted data. Microsoft stated that while this bug has been publicly detailed, they are not aware of any active exploitation. **Pavan Davuluri**, Microsoft Executive Vice President, noted in a July 9 blog post that Windows users should expect "a higher volume of security updates included in each security release" due to AI-driven vulnerability discovery. "The pace of vulnerability discovery is changing with advances in AI making it possible to find more issues, faster, across more code, with new mechanisms that can accelerate both discovery and analysis," Davuluri wrote. **Jack Bicer**, Director of Vulnerability Research at **Action1**, highlighted **CVE-2026-48561**, a remote code execution (RCE) flaw in **Microsoft Copilot** with a CVSS threat score of 9.6. This vulnerability allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over the network. Microsoft explains that an attacker could exploit this by hosting a malicious website that causes **Microsoft Edge** for Android to automatically send crafted prompts to Copilot when a user visits the site. While AI accelerates vulnerability discovery and remediation, it also empowers attackers to quickly devise exploits for known software flaws. Microsoft's long-standing "exploitability index" – its assessment of how likely an exploit is – is now being challenged by the speed of AI. **Satnam Narang**, Senior Staff Research Engineer at **Tenable**, argues that Microsoft's exploitability index needs to adapt to the machine speed of discovery. He points out that Microsoft initially rated this month's SharePoint zero-day as "less likely" to be exploited, despite it being added to **CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities** list on July 1. Narang stated, "Anthropic’s Red Team’s own findings for known vulnerabilities (n-days) revealed how fragile this system has become, with its Mythos Preview model being able to produce proof-of-concept exploits for 13 of 14 vulnerabilities that were rated ‘Exploitation Less Likely’ or ‘Exploitation Unlikely.'" He added, "What this means is that our way of looking at Patch Tuesday has changed, because the exploitability index is centered around humans, not AI tools, and as these tools continue to improve, defense needs to improve alongside it." **Chris Goettl** at **Ivanti** noted that Microsoft's record patch numbers coincide with other major software vendors, like **Adobe**, increasing their patch cadences. Adobe, also citing AI for accelerating its cycles, is moving to twice-monthly security bulletins. **Cisco**, **Mozilla**, and **Oracle** are also shipping updates more frequently, with **Google's** June 2026 patch batches totaling over 900 security fixes. Given the sheer volume of patches this month, end-users are advised to consider waiting a few days before applying these fixes. It is not uncommon for security patches to introduce system stability issues, and the chances of this may increase with such a large release. As always, backing up your Windows system and data before applying updates remains a crucial best practice.