Windows AI Feature to Return After Unpopularity Leads to Removal

Despite concerns surrounding privacy and security, Microsoft is still moving forward with its plans to release a revised version of its AI-powered Recall feature in the near future.

Starting in October, an updated and revised version of Recall will be rolled out to Windows Insider PCs.

Microsoft’s initial plan was to incorporate Recall into their Copilot+ PC program, which would have been bundled with Microsoft Surface devices utilizing the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. Nevertheless, due to considerable backlash from users and security professionals, the function was ultimately removed.

The initial concerns surrounding Recall were focused on its ongoing data scraping capabilities. Specifically, Recall would operate in the background, periodically capturing screenshots of user behavior. Any text would then be processed using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and saved in a searchable database.

A person using Microsoft's Recall feature — Microsoft

The discovery of this database raised worries that it could potentially allow unauthorized individuals, including remote users, to gain access to and view personal data stored within it.

The main objective of Recall was to assist users in finding misplaced information. This data could potentially include sensitive information such as passwords, credit card details, and bank information, making it a prime target for hackers, identity thieves, and other malicious individuals. Surprisingly, Microsoft failed to incorporate any encryption or security measures for the scraped data in Recall.

Microsoft has announced on the Windows blog that the updated version of Recall will have encryption enabled. Users will need to authenticate themselves and occasionally reauthenticate in order to access the searchable database. Furthermore, the feature will be disabled by default, so individuals who want to utilize it will have to manually enable it in Settings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JmkWJNng2I

Introducing Copilot+ PCs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JmkWJNng2I)

The updated Recall will be included in the preview build, which will be accessible to Windows Insiders on PCs that meet the Copilot+ system requirements. This entails having an NPU (neural processing unit), 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage.

Copilot+ plans to release builds that will support both AMD and Intel CPUs on x86 PCs before the end of the year.