Microsoft has promised to make several changes to its upcoming Recall feature after a storm of controversy. It’s just been over a few weeks after the Redmond-based company announced Recall as one of a number of exclusive artificial intelligence (AI) features coming to new Copilot+ PCs, such as the Surface laptop 7 And Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge.
But in that time, the UK data protection watchdog has confirmed that it is “inquiring” with Microsoftand billionaire SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has warned millions of followers on X to ditch the feature– all this despite Recall not actually being available on Windows 11 PCs yet.
Recall is the main feature of this range of Copilot+ PCs, allowing you to scroll back through everything that happened on your Windows 11 machine and jump back in time with one click. Everything is searchable because AI has searched the images and text on the device
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Even worse, a former Microsoft engineer Kevin Beaumont labeled Recall a “disaster” and warned that “stealing everything you’ve ever typed or viewed on your own Windows PC is now possible with two lines of code.” The security experts published a long blog post criticized the post last week.
And it looks like Microsoft has been listening to the discourse surrounding its flashy new AI trick.
“Even before we made Recall available to customers, we heard a clear signal that we can make it easier for people to enable Recall on their Copilot+ PC and improve privacy and security safeguards,” said Pavan Davuluri, Corporate Vice President of Windows and Devices, in a new blog post.
“Our team is driven by a relentless desire to empower people through the transformative potential of AI and we see great utility in Recall and the problem it can solve. We also know that people can get the full value from experiences like Recall, they have to rely on it. That’s why we’re launching Recall in preview on Copilot+ PCs – to give customers the choice of whether to get started with the feature early or not, and to give us the opportunity to learn from the types. real-world scenarios that customers and the Windows community find most useful.”
The Microsoft executive outlines a number of adjustments to Recall ahead of its launch on June 18, when the first Copilot+ PCs will go on sale. Recall and several other AI features coming to Windows 11 won’t be included in a free software update for all users. Instead, users will need to upgrade to a Copilot+ certified laptop.
To address concerns surrounding Recall, Microsoft will:
- Disable Recall by default: You must now manually enable the functionality during the installation process of your Copilot+ PC. This will “give people a clearer choice to opt-in to saving snapshots using Recall,” Pavan Davuluri explains.
- Before making any changes in Recall, sign in to Windows Hello using a fingerprint scanner, PIN, or facial recognition on your PC. Not only that, but “proof of attendance is also required to view your timeline and search Recall,” Microsoft says.
- To address the issues identified in Kevin Beaumont’s explosive blog post, “just in time” decryption will unlock your database of screenshots when your identity is verified with Windows Hello, “so that Recall snapshots are only decrypted and accessible when the user authenticates”.
- The entire search index database is now encrypted to keep users’ data safe
In response to the Recall controversy, Microsoft will now disable the feature and “snapshots” by default for all Copilot+ PCs. During the installation process, the feature is thoroughly explained to users with the above popup, offering them the option to enable Recall
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Recall works by taking screenshots (or “snapshots” as Microsoft calls them) of what’s happening on your screen. Microsoft uses on-device AI to transcribe the text of web pages, Word documents, PDFs, handwritten notes, and anything else that appears on the screen on your PC, so everything is directly searchable.
For example, if you know you looked at flights to Spain in the last month, you can search for the destination to find the exact web page. With a single click, Windows 11 calls up the document, image, video, or web page and picks up where you left off. You can also scroll back in time through the screenshots, which are taken hundreds of times an hour and can be kept for months at a time.
Yusuf Mehdi, Chief Marketing Officer at Microsoft, described Recallas “photographic memory” for your laptop. Mehdi wrote: “We wanted to solve one of the most frustrating problems we encounter every day: finding something we know we’ve seen before on our PC.
“Today we have to remember what file folder it was saved in, what website it was on, or scroll through hundreds of emails to find it. With Recall you can now access virtually what you saw on your PC in no time or done in a way that feels like you have a photographic memory.”
In the latter company blog post,Pavan Davuluri adds: “You are always in control of what is saved as a snapshot. You can disable snapshot saving, temporarily pause them, filter applications and websites so they don’t appear in snapshots, and delete your snapshots at any time. “
By default, Recall stops taking snapshots when you use a private browsing mode in your web browser, such as incognito mode in Google Chrome.
Recall and some other AI features will be exclusive to Windows 11 on so-called Copilot+ PCs, including the newly announced Surface Laptop 7th Edition, pictured above MICROSOFT PRESS OFFICE
To reassure Windows 11 users, Pavan Davuluri has promised to continue listening to user feedback.
“We will continue to listen and learn from our customers, including consumers, developers and enterprises, to evolve our experiences in ways that are meaningful to them. We are excited about the upcoming launch of Copilot+ PCs on June 18 and about the innovative new features and benefits that this entirely new category of PCs brings.
“We will continue to build these new capabilities and experiences for our customers by prioritizing privacy, safety and security. We remain grateful for the vibrant community of customers who continue to share their feedback with us,” the blog post ends.
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With the launch of Copilot+ PCs this month, there will be two different types of Windows 11 devices: those with advanced AI features and those with the standard bundle of features available on non-Copilot+ PC desktop PCs, tablets and laptops certification. The latter is the version of Windows 11 that will be available to Windows 10 users who take advantage of the free upgrade.
Windows 10 will lose support next year excluding millions of users from critical bug fixes and new features – unless they pay an annual fee to Microsoft.