Recall on Windows 11: What Is this AI Feature and Is It Safe to Use?

May. 21, 2024

At the Surface event yesterday, Microsoft announced Copilot+ PCs includingSurface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11, powered by theSnapdragon X serieschipsets. The Redmond giant demoed many new AI features that will be part of Copilot+ PCs and will require a powerful NPU. Among them, Recall — internally called AI Explorer — is the next-gen AI feature Microsoft wants to push on Windows 11.

Recall is an AI feature that takes screenshots of your screen every few seconds and creates a photographic memory of your activity on the PC. Later, you can search for things using natural language prompts and further interact with the content from the past.

What About Privacy?

While Recall may seem like a somewhat useful feature, I feel it’s quite invasive to actively take screenshots of the screen. Microsoft on itsFAQ pagesays the screenshots are encrypted and saved on the device locally.

All of the AI processing happens locally using the integrated NPU and none of your personal data is sent to the cloud. Microsoft further says, “Your snapshots are yours; they stay locally on your PC.“

In addition, you can always pause or altogether stop the Recall AI feature. Next, you can filter apps and websites where Recall won’t take screenshots. And you can delete all of your snapshots or individual snapshots from the Settings menu. By the way, Recall is designed to not take screenshots of Incognito window (Private web browsing), and DRM content.

And it doesn’t do content moderation on captured screenshots which means it will not hide passwords or financial details. Currently, the Recall feature is in preview and Microsoft will keep adding improved controls and privacy features based on user feedback.

Despite all of the privacy safeguards and controls available to users, I am simply not comfortable sharing my screen with Recall. Especially when it unlocks a few use cases that I might not use at all. My primary concern with Recall is that it’s turned on by default. Most users may not even know that such a feature is already running on their PC. I think Microsoft must make it opt-in, by default.

Next, creating a semantic index, although encrypted locally, opens a new attack vector for malicious players. The semantic index includes contextual information about my files, emails, browsing activity, etc. which are highly sensitive in nature. Unknown vulnerabilities in the system may be exploited to gain access to sensitive data.

In information security, there is a well-established principle of not centralizing sensitive information and promoting data minimization. In case of data breach, it can lead to a single point of failure. I am personally not excited for the so-called groundbreaking Recall AI feature on Windows 11. The first thing I would do on aCopilot+ PCis to disable it right away.

Passionate about Windows, ChromeOS, Android, security and privacy issues. Have a penchant to solve everyday computing problems.