At a Build conference event on Monday, Microsoft revealed a new AI-powered feature called "Recall" for Copilot+ PCs that will allow Windows 11 users to search and retrieve their past activities on their PC.
To make it work, Recall records everything users do on their PC, including activities in apps, communications in live meetings, and websites visited for research.
By performing a Recall action, users can access a snapshot from a specific time period, providing context for the event or moment they are searching for.
For example, someone with access to your Windows account could potentially use Recall to see everything you've been doing recently on your PC, which might extend beyond the embarrassing implications of pornography viewing and actually threaten the lives of journalists or perceived enemies of the state.
Despite the privacy concerns, Microsoft says that the Recall index remains local and private on-device, encrypted in a way that is linked to a particular user's account.
To use Recall, users will need to purchase one of the new "Copilot Plus PCs" powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips, which include the necessary neural processing unit (NPU).
The original article contains 596 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
The thing that annoys me with this kind of thing is that there’s so much tech like this that COULD be really useful if we had absolutely any trust in Microsoft and big tech at all.
Like… data, data collection, ai, and big data could be so useful for general users, but instead of creating useful ui and features for users, they only suck up all our data to build nice charts for advertisers and feed all our data to ai that can help them train their advertising models to try and extract more money from us.
Yeah, agreed. The dream of AI is it understanding what you want and offering it, or even doing it for you. But this inherently requires a computer system to understand everything about what you want. Perfect for big tech companies that are hungry for your advertising data. This is why we need more open source model projects!
It's not just about trusting Microsoft, but about control over the technology. Users will never have real control over AI technology, it's too valuable and the inner workings are anxiously being kept under wraps by the big techbro companies. It also runs on their computers for the most part, so of course we can't trust what's being done with it, regardless of whether Microsoft has been a good boy or a bad boy recently.
Someone will figure out how to turn it off again in fairly short order (it might be as simple as a mklink to NUL for the storage directory, causing it to send its recordings into the void). What irritates me more is the typical Microsoft misuse of the word "feature".
(I mean, this thing does have some potential uses (imagine being able to see what that elderly relative you provide tech support for actually did when they claim they "did nothing"), but the privacy concerns vastly outweigh them.)
As long as this is opt-in and users understand the risks, then I don't have a problem with it. I wouldn't use it on my personal PC, but it would probably be handy for my work PC. (Although my organization would probably block the feature for security reasons. So maybe it's not actually that useful after all.)
It'll be opt-out with the setting in some obscure and hard to find menu, just like every other AI program. And that's if they're required to even allow you to opt out.
It's conjecture based on evidence from the way previous companies have handled AI data as well as the way Microsoft themselves generally handle things.
I'd rather prepare for the corporate greed and be pleasantly surprised than be disappointed when Microsoft does something that will negatively impact their userbase in the name of profits again (or MAUs or whatever else looks good on the quarterly report).
It's amazing how spiteful the Linux folks are... Look at all those downvotes on this.
You bring up an incredibly good point here. I can't think of any large business that would allow this. This almost guarantees that this feature will not be mandatory, to say the very least.
This said, I'd not want this on my work computer. I'd be concerned it could become a slippery slope of monitoring employees in the name of efficiency.
The whole thing is going to be run on a local LLM.
They don't have to upload that data anywhere for this to work (it will work offline). But considering what they already do, Microsoft is going to have to do a lot to prove that they aren't doing this.
It's funny. Security folks say how insecure Windows XP is, and how it becomes compromised within seconds/minutes of having an internet connection. It's like Microsoft took that as a playbook challenge to repeat as an OOTB feature, instead of waiting for malware to do it.
I think Microsoft's ultimate goal is to turn your computer into a locked-down console. Infested with data collection malware. And it won't allow third-party apps ever.
My next computer will be a dual-boot machine. I will use Windows ONLY for gaming. No personal info or activity on that partition at all. And I'll use Linux to get sh*t done.
Use Xorg with the proprietary driver instead of Wayland for the time being. Much less issues. You can always switch to Wayland later when either Nvidia support matures, or when your next computer has an AMD GPU.
Or get a cheap ass AMD GPU, like an RX6400, plop it in as a second GPU and run on that in Linux. Perfectly serviceable for plain desktop stuff.
Or run on integrated graphics, if you have it. Again, perfectly serviceable for plain desktop stuff.
I have a 4060ti, swapped over to endeavour (arch with gui (btw)) after some previous microsoft fuckery. Damn near everything worked out of the box. The only issue that i had, that i still cant fix, is getting wayland working. Xorg works perfectly fine, but wayland is just the future. Nvidia started releasing driver updates for linux that'll make it start working easier tho.
Ive used computers for my whole life so i know not everyone will share my experience with linux. But trouble shooting on windows was so much worse for me. Looking at depreciated forum posts, wishing i was back on windows 7, searching through weird, halfway redundant menus (how many device management menus are there???) And so on. So much of the system gets in your way because it doesnt trust you. With linux its as simple as googling your problem, some guy had the same issue 3 years ago and his fix still works. You go to the terminal and its like
do this
are you sure?
sudo do this
And then the problems gone (except for wayland, i know). Its great.
Yeah but you said you wanted a dual-boot machine for your next computer, with Windows only for gaming. What I meant is: why not get a head start and make your current computer that dual-boot machine?
It's an old desktop that doesn't even support Windows 11 hardware requirements. I built it back in 2009, so Windows 10 will be its last Windows OS. I don't want to dual-boot now and then have to upgrade and transfer everything in a couple of years.
