• Recall is a new feature that will record everything a user does just in case they want to search for it later.
• This includes screenshots of everything you do from inputting passwords to your bank account but users can switch it off.
• Microsoft says Recall data is encrypted on the device and isn’t shared at all.

Artificial intelligence is progressing quickly and much like Ian Malcolm posited in the 90s, we’re wondering if any developers have stopped to ask if they should be creating AI solutions. Case in point, Recall, a new feature for Windows 11 and Copilot+ PCs.

Copilot+ PCs are Microsoft’s way of telling you that a PC meets a certain spec for AI tasks, right now that translates into a PC running the Snapdragon X Elite Platform, but the hardware spec could of course change in future.

More on those PCs later today, for now we’re interested in the aforementioned Recall. The Redmond firm says that this feature will help users find what they are looking for. This is accomplished by recording everything you do on your PC and storing it locally.

“Now with Recall, you can access virtually what you have seen or done on your PC in a way that feels like having photographic memory. Copilot+ PCs organize information like we do – based on relationships and associations unique to each of our individual experiences. This helps you remember things you may have forgotten so you can find what you’re looking for quickly and intuitively by simply using the cues you remember,” Microsoft writes.

“You can scroll across time to find the content you need in your timeline across any application, website, document, or more. Interact intuitively using snapshots with screenray to help you take the next step using suggested actions based on object recognition. And get back to where you were, whether to a specific email in Outlook or the right chat in Teams,” the company adds.

Users can decide what content Recall records and it won’t record content that has DRM protections. However it will display passwords, usernames, account numbers, your financial information and just about anything else.

Microsoft says that this data is protected and encrypted using on-device encryption and only the user will be able to see their screenshots. That’s all good and well but we’re not especially keen to have everything we do recorded. The risk that this data falls into the wrong hands is too high for us and it should be for every Windows user as well.

Microsoft can crow about its encryption and security measures but all that bragging becomes meaningless when an operating system is no longer supported. Microsoft has a long history of abandoning software that is still in use. WannaCry ransomware spread incredibly quickly because it leveraged a vulnerability in Windows that hadn’t been patched in years because Microsoft stopped supporting the software. Can you imagine a Recall problem that leaked every screenshot a user posted?

It also doesn’t inspire confidence that on Copilot+’s product page, security gets a mention in one sentence.

Recall and other Copilot+ features will become available on 18th June, but you will need to have one of these fancy new Snapdragon X Series laptops. We suspect that at around that time a clock will begin ticking on the darker corners of the internet as cybercriminals start trying to crack Recall and the data it holds.