The feature is invisible to you, but not to hackers
Gigabyte had good intentions by designing a feature on their motherboards that calls home every reboot to see if there is any new firmware that could be installed automatically and without the user having to do anything. From the Ars Technica article it appears that this is not so much a bios update but a firmware update for the various features your motherboard offers, be it audio or networking. We’re not big fans of computers silently calling home, and while Gigabyte had good intentions, they should have included a way to disable it for users who don’t want their computer to update without their intervention.
However there is a major problem with Gigabyte’s automatic firmware update, it is ridiculously insecure and is used to load software onto unsuspecting people’s computers. Eclypsium researchers discovered that the stealth updater downloads code without authenticating it properly, and even does it over HTTP! This gives attackers a huge attack surface, as they could download virtually any code onto a machine, without the user even noticing.
Even worse, this is unlikely to be fixed with an update that leaves millions of Gigabyte motherboard owners susceptible to attack until the next motherboard update.
