Microsoft is one of the largest and most influential tech companies in the world.
It has introduced numerous innovations and advancements, but throughout its history, it has faced criticism and legal issues multiple times. It seems they might be headed for controversy again. Futurism reported on a new feature that Microsoft is currently testing. The American giant has unveiled the latest Windows feature called Recall, powered by artificial intelligence. This feature will record user activity within the OS to help users remember all their past activities. It uses these snapshots to suggest actions based on recognized content, such as easily returning to specific emails in Outlook or conversations in Teams.
Users can interact with information in these screenshots, such as URLs, text, and images, making it easier to search and engage with historical data.
The screenshots captured by Recall will be analyzed by an NPU (neural processing unit) and an AI model to extract information from the screenshots. These will then be added to a new Windows semantic index. Users will have control over which information and applications Recall can capture and will be able to delete individual snapshots, edit and remove time segments in Settings, or pause the entire feature at any time.
However, this feature won’t be for everyone. Microsoft plans to integrate it into the newly introduced Copilot+ laptop.
Privacy Concerns
The new feature has raised significant privacy concerns among users. Although Microsoft claims that the data will be stored locally and not shared with their servers, there are fears that if hackers gain local access to the device, they could access these data. Microsoft is attempting to alleviate these concerns. The tech company states that all this data is encrypted using Bitlocker encryption linked to the user’s account.
