Microsoft apologizes after spamming Xbox users with "dummy message" from AI platform

The Xbox mobile app from Microsoft had a hiccup earlier today, sending out a blast of messages to users that it certainly didn't intend to do. If you're someone who was on the receiving end of this and was afraid of something happening with your Microsoft/Xbox account, Microsoft has now confirmed that this was an error on their part and that they are investigating.

Phones with the official Xbox app installed on them were the unfortunate target of this spam, which simply said, "This is a dummy message sent via Braze, please capture a screenshot once you receive it. This should take you to the recently added gallery."

While it doesn't look like everyone with the app was affected, enough were hit by the sudden notification barrage to make it a hot topic on social media.

Users reported dozens of these notifications landing on their phones over a small period of time earlier today, February 25, while some had only received an annoying few. Several posts even show that Ubisoft's Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora game artwork was attached to the messages.

Microsoft responded to the test message spam later, saying its engineers are working to find out what happened:

We are aware that some users have received errant messaging through the Xbox Mobile App. Apologies for this inconvenience. Currently, our engineering teams are working to identify the underlying cause of these notifications.

Brazen, the service mentioned in the spammed message, is an AI-powered customer engagement platform that can deliver targeted and personalized notifications to users. It looks like internal messages meant for a test environment integrating the AI system into the Xbox app had accidentally gone out of their way and ended up in real users' phones.

Source

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Posted Thursday 26 February 2026 at 11:44 am AEST (my time).

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