New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC

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New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC​

Benj Edwards

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. Despite encryption and local storage, the new feature raises privacy concerns for certain Windows users.
 
Decko87 said:
What's the best Linux Distro for gaming and Unity development? Come 2025 it's time to go, no one asked for these "features".
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Obviously people did, that feature exists as a program people get for their Mac already:
https://www.imore.com/apps/mac-apps...on-so-you-can-search-through-your-online-life

Asking outloud when was the x meeting and the computer knowing is obviously something virtually anyone working on a computer would want (or what was the green jacket I looked at on Amazon last week ?), as long it is well encrypted, does not impact performance much, etc...

In what way it would not be just a giant plus to have ?

Imagine being an employer and having employes working on your computer, for example... would you not ask-love something like this ? That something inferior does not already exist and used by them ?
 
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You will probably be able to ask out loud, did I did something that could have made X stop working the last 24 hours, it was working yesterday ?
 
Does he goes the whole video without saying it is an option, that be turned off or on only on a list of application you want recorded ?

LigTasm said:
I don't care if it can fly out and give me a damn reacharound, I DONT WANT IT.
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If you don't want it, you will probably care that it can be simply turned off.. not sure to follow.

DouglasteR said:
What possible could go wrong ?
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Not have been in the wild for long enough (will be a whole year maybe ?)

Rewind users feedback, could give an idea:
https://numericcitizen.me/rewinding-30-days-of-my-experience-with-rewind-for-mac/
 
DPI said:
The fact MS has a bad track record of "Off" / Paused / Disabled not actually meaning Off or Disabled is what will be concerning for many.
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Scrutiny will be high (because everyone will have concerns, there a reason they insist of being local, encrypted, using marketing like: first make clear this is my computer) and your recorded file size last change date should not be too hard.

I imagine the fully off or not should be easy, with how encrypted-compressed it will be, how well does it really respect which application you want recorded and so on would be more complicated I imagine. And even if it is really more efficient than Apple version, I imagine it will still use a perceptible amount of the cpu-npu.

Scrutiny will be so high at first (this is a feature for work computer and the company that own them really do not want trade secret, HR info, floating around), that this full generation, I would not worry that much.

Worrying that employer will have a way to use it in a near future if one is against employer monitoring their computer used by employee to that level, yes I would. That once the tech is powerful enough to take an hard to perceive amount of compute that it will maybe be one day auto-on just because 95% of people love it (the percentage of people that have an internet history that exist could be an idea, it is pretty much giving you an internet history easy to search) and hard to turn of, I would also.
 
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LukeTbk said:
Obviously people did, that feature exists as a program people get for their Mac already:
https://www.imore.com/apps/mac-apps...on-so-you-can-search-through-your-online-life
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I appreciate the devil's advocate approach you seem to be taking to both-sides'ing this debate while others may only kneejerk to the headline - nuance and perspective is important - but in this case I'd argue that a third party MacOS developer trying to jump the AI gravytrain and hoping their app catches on doesn't necessarily mean it's anything people asked for. I'm sure some will find use for it, but Recall for MacOS looks mostly like a "if we build it, they will come...hopefully" gamble.

Regardless, third party MacOS app isn't the same as firstparty embedded in the OS. The latter has greater abuse potential because of Copilot's access to the kernel, and being able coordinate with the kernel and OS teams for things like greater blackboxed data collection. We've already seen this with Edge, which collects far more data than Chrome or any other browser. Only Edge enjoys privileged access to the underlying OS and by extension anything on your system.
 
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LukeTbk said:
The fact record can be simply turned off (or paused) not being mentionned lead to strange comments section
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That's the loaded question, can it be "simply" turned off? Especially if you are not aware of this "feature". Then when will the other shoe drop and this "feature" is required to be on in order for your os (whatever future version it may be) to operate properly?
 
kac77 said:

New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC​

Benj Edwards

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. Despite encryption and local storage, the new feature raises privacy concerns for certain Windows users.
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I know their motivation is not what the user wants. It is what is best for them, and being able to collect this type of data is the most profitable for them.

...but they have to be able to at least sell this to users.

Are there really enough users out there who would just accept this?
 
DPI said:
A third party developer trying to jump the AI gravytrain and hoping it sticks doesn't necessarily mean it's anything people asked for.
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Fair enough, but something like this working well, who would not want it ? Do we really think no employer ever wanted to record-monitior what their computer do ? That seem unlikely that Dell supportassist and other monitoring device have no demand and clients.

The fear come from the idea people will love it and use it so much that would be one day on by default and hard to remove, because how nice it can be is so obvious.
 
Me: 600 TBW on my ssd is more than plenty, I would have to write a TB every 3 days for years before I hit that
Me in 2 years firing up Samsung Magican: what do you mean I used up 70% of the write cycles!!!?$@#!
 
sfsuphysics said:
That's the loaded question, can it be "simply" turned off? Especially if you are not aware of this "feature". Then when will the other shoe drop and this "feature" is required to be on in order for your os (whatever future version it may be) to operate properly?
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Yes it is a simple setting, no a regedit or powershell command:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/recall-and-your-data-d404f672-7647-41e5-886c-a3c59680af15#:~:text=Saving snapshots is turned on,system tray on your PC.
You can always turn off saving snapshots at any time by going to Settings> Privacy & security > Recall & snapshots

Will have to see if people would be not aware (or like the dropbox and other on the first boot you will to go throught next->next click that proudly tell you about it and how it works.

Yes obviously the employer requirement to be on the work machine or one day being not something that turn off is an obvious concern, just saying a lot of people will burry the lead that it is a simple things that can be turned off because it is better for the clicks.

sfsuphysics said:
Me: 600 TBW on my ssd is more than plenty, I would have to write a TB every 3 days for years before I hit that
Me in 2 years firing up Samsung Magican: what do you mean I used up 70% of the write cycles!!!?$@#!
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I think that will help make people freak out a bit, but compression ratio will maybe get close to 5,000 to 1, if you keep only your last 2 week, it could be under 5GB of disk space, writing under 2 GB a week.

Microsoft talk about 25GB for 3 months (which match macos app usage)
 
sfsuphysics said:
"A program people get" is considerably different than "you can turn it off because it will be on by default maybe not even with your knowledge" ... at least IMO
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Yes for sure, but that not what being talked about, the claim was this a feature no employer (or dell-hp of the world) would have ever asked Microsoft, like if it was something they came out with themselves.
 
Vermillion said:
What could possibly go wrong?
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Adn that would be both ways, imagine if it did, so at all time it try to detect if something is a password or an account number and trigger an event that something is and do something different... would it make people feel better.

About everyone has those already recorded on their machine right now (would it be a third part app or their browser too) that part is not that much of a change.
 
I just want star trek, i ask a computer a question and it gives me a useful answer
 
LukeTbk said:
Asking outloud when was the x meeting and the computer knowing is obviously something virtually anyone working on a computer would want (or what was the green jacket I looked at on Amazon last week ?), as long it is well encrypted, does not impact performance much, etc...

In what way it would not be just a giant plus to have ?

Imagine being an employer and having employes working on your computer, for example... would you not ask-love something like this ? That something inferior does not already exist and used by them ?
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You can already do that with available tools. The AI question is the same as the NFT question: what, exactly, is the problem it's trying to solve that existing tools don't already cover? Do we just want to continue to drop the collective IQ of the human population until we no longer need our frontal lobes?
DouglasteR said:
What possible could go wrong ?
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Vermillion said:
What could possibly go wrong?
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1716318782061.png
 
Armenius said:
You can already do that with available tools. The AI question is the same as the NFT question: what, exactly, is the problem it's trying to solve that existing tools don't already cover? Do we just want to continue to drop the collective IQ of the human population until we no longer need our frontal lobes?
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4000-5000 to one compression ratio and the chat-gpt interaction with your snapchot history, last week during an afternoon meeting someone said to not forget something about the network, what was it ? Can you resume the last meeting with keys bullet point, where did I save the PowerPoint about sales, what the phone number of X (that was at one point on the screen)

Do you think Microsoft would be shy to release this on windows at large instead of Arm only if it could work well with current hardware ? (well maybe, but that quite the 4d chess move)
 
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LukeTbk said:
Scrutiny will be high (because everyone will have concerns, there a reason they insist of being local, encrypted, using marketing like: first make clear this is my computer) and your recorded file size last change date should not be too hard.

I imagine the fully off or not should be easy, with how encrypted-compressed it will be, how well does it really respect which application you want recorded and so on would be more complicated I imagine. And even if it is really more efficient than Apple version, I imagine it will still use a perceptible amount of the cpu-npu.
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I suspect MS understands scrutiny will be high at first, and so might ship something better-behaved initially, with a plan to relax the ToS later when no one's looking as they've done previously.

I have no doubt Enterprise windows in a business setting under careful Group Policy control will have any opt-out or disabled setting respected without it getting flipped back on in the next windows update. MS doesn't seem to fuck with their bread and butter Enterprise customers. The group more at risk to stealth ToS and privacy policy changes are home users obviously.
 
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Well this just sounds like an extended version of their VM Checkpoints.
I use it on my remote workstations.
Could have some decent security features for snapshot roll back and such. Especially when paired with some O365 SharePoint OneDrive shenanigans.
 
How many times are people going to say "just turn it off" before you just choose a different OS.
MS in NO WAY is giving customers what they want, not even close anymore.
It's like a spouse getting the crap beat out of her by her husband and while she is still crying she says but but "he loves me".
 
LukeTbk said:
The fact record can be simply turned off (or paused) not being mentionned lead to strange comments section
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LukeTbk said:
Does he goes the whole video without saying it is an option, that be turned off or on only on a list of application you want recorded ?
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I don't think anyone is assuming there is no OFF switch. However it will certainly be strictly opt out, and we all know it is hard to opt out of something you don't know about.
I also wouldn't trust MS for the OFF option to do what is expected. Off might just mean you don't get the benefits (for what little they are worth) while they are still able to collect the data through the feature.
Darunion said:
The "I dont know what I did but this thing isnt working" Could be helpful to see what was done?
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Having a complete record of everything you did on your computer is a huge price to pay for a tiny bit of convenience. How long before courts start to subpoena MS for users' Recall history?
No thanks, I don't want total surveillance on my computer at my home. Not even if there was some huge boon in it for me, but as of yet I question its usefulness completely.

Darunion said:
I just want star trek, i ask a computer a question and it gives me a useful answer
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Verbal communication is very inefficient, why would you want that? By the time I explain what I want I've done it with regular inputs 10 times over. Not to mention talking to a computer is cringe.
 
Lakados said:
Well this just sounds like an extended version of their VM Checkpoints.
I use it on my remote workstations.
Could have some decent security features for snapshot roll back and such. Especially when paired with some O365 SharePoint OneDrive shenanigans.
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Except you can't just restore these snapshots, they are for datamining purposes only.
 
Ai is going to destroy any sense of reason in people especially kids with developing brains. Just heard some ai music on YouTube it's all terrible.
 
M76 said:
Verbal communication is very inefficient, why would you want that? By the time I explain what I want I've done it with regular inputs 10 times over. Not to mention talking to a computer is cringe.
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My use case for verbal is when im working on something and i need to look something up so i need to clean the grease or junk off my hands so i can use my phone or keyboard. Since as it stands currently voice questions provide nothing more useful than time or weather. No i certainly dont want to talk to my pc while im just sitting there that would be silly.
 
I can just see how easy turning this shit off will be.
And how often it will turn itself back on every fucking time Windows updates.
And just how "local" the storage will be.
And when the first breach of the "local" information will happen in whichever "local" country happens to be hosting that data centre.

Microsoft lost any right to any sort of benefit of the doubt a very long time ago.
 
"But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft openly admits that Recall will be taking screenshots of your passwords and private data"

Yeah, that's a big F no...not on my PC
 
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