Microsoft has announced a new feature for Windows 11 called “Recall,” previously known as “AI Explorer“. This feature is designed to track user activities and allow users to revisit any moment using natural language commands.
Comprehensive Activity Tracking
Recall can monitor a wide range of user activities, including applications, websites, chats, files, and even specific locations within files, such as a particular slide in a PowerPoint presentation. The feature compiles all this data into a single timeline, enabling users to easily navigate back to previous tasks or moments.
Recall functions like a photographic memory for your PC, allowing you to access everything you've seen or done on your computer in an organized manner using queries in your native language. The feature utilizes snapshots to suggest actions based on what it recognizes, making it easy to return to specific emails in Outlook or the right chat in Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft emphasizes that all data collected by Recall is processed locally on the user's device. The company assures users that their data will not be stored on external servers, nor will it be used to train Microsoft's AI models. This local-only processing aims to address potential privacy concerns associated with the feature.
Exclusive Availability
Recall will be available exclusively on Copilot+ PCs which are equipped with Qualcomm chips and Neural Processing Units (NPUs). Recall requires a PC that supports 40 TOPs NPU, a Snapdragon X chip, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage.
Microsoft says the feature will roll out with support for several languages, including English, Chinese (simplified), French, German, Japanese, and Spanish.
User Control and Security
“Recall leverages your personal semantic index, built and stored entirely on your device,” reads a new announcement from Microsoft's Yusuf Mehdi. “Your snapshots are yours; they stay locally on your PC. You can delete individual snapshots, adjust and delete ranges of time in Settings, or pause at any point right from the icon in the System Tray on your Taskbar.”
While Microsoft states that no data will be sent to their servers, concerns remain about how this recorded data will be locally secured on Windows devices. If a threat actor gains local access to a device, they could potentially access this data or transfer it to their own computers to analyze the information offline for sensitive data.
