OPNION: If it’s taking this long for Microsoft to feel confident about even previewing Recall among its most loyal users, it gives me no confidence the feature can ever fully be relied upon to safeguard your security and privacy. The optics are so bad, Microsoft should totally cancel Recall.
Microsoft has confirmed it is once again holding back the AI-based Recall feature, which has been a controversy magnet since its announcement almost half a year ago. And, in my opinion, with good reason.
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The ‘photographic memory’ tool, is designed for the new wave of AI-infused Microsoft CoPilot Plus PCs and will capture a screenshot of pretty much everything you do on your PC – barring some exemptions – every few seconds.
The idea is to create a vast database you can search at any time in order to surface files, photos, documents and more. Anything you’ve seen and saved on your PC will be easier to find.
However, Microsoft has twice decided against rolling out the feature, while it added additional guardrails against potentially damaging outcomes of using it.
Firstly it halted was due to well-grounded security concerns. Upon its announcement, security reseachers discovered the limitations of the security protections, which could be easily bypassed without administrator privleges on a PC.
“You cannot convince me that Microsoft’s security teams looked at this and said ‘that looks secure,’” Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker and private security consultant told Wired in June. “As it stands now, it’s a security dumpster fire. This is one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen from an enterprise security standpoint.”
Less creepy and dangerous
Then, in September the company went to great lengths to reassure users it was going to be safe to use, private, and entirely optional ahead of its rollout this autumn.
It also detailed all the ways to stop it being creepy and dangerous. ‘Sensitive content filtering’ meant your passwords and sensitive account numbers wouldn’t be captured. The feature can also be told to avoid capturing screenshots when specific apps and websites were in use. Additionally, Microsoft said turning on private browsing would ensure data wouldn’t be captured at all. Sounds better, right?
Well, even after all of this, Microsoft doesn’t feel ready to proceed, even in beta among its most forgiving of customers.
The company must be keen to get this feature out into the wild in order to push the idea of CoPilot Plus PCs, especially with Apple now rolling out the first Apple Intelligence features for Mac. However, it seems Recall just isn’t safe to use. It isn’t yet secure or trustworthy, Microsoft has basically said today.
“We are committed to delivering a secure and trusted experience with Recall. To ensure we deliver on these important updates, we’re taking additional time to refine the experience before previewing it with Windows Insiders,” Brandon LeBlanc, senior product manager of Windows, told The Verge on October 31.
The report says the delays are related to ensure the closing-the-stable-door-after-the-horse-has-bolted features, like the ability to opt-out, are working. It’s also working hard behind the scenes to ensure users can actually fully uninstall Recall if they don’t want it anywhere near their Windows experience, even turned off. It is also adding full encryption and ensuring the only way to access the Recall trove is through biometric authentication.
It begs the question why the feature wasn’t initially designed and promoted with these features in mind? It was only after the backlash that Microsoft took action to shore-up the feature and add safeguards to prevent users being embarrassingly/dangerously caught out by Recall, or the ability to avoid it entirely.
But no, Microsoft has been preoccupied with being first in this AI arms race. This has been evident in its initial, rapid rollouts of the Bing AI search, as well as the broad push to transform Windows into an AI-first computing platform – regardless of the wishes of a sceptical public that has shown no signs of prioritising these features in purchase decisions.
At this point, Recall just needs to go. We were fine, if mildly inconvenienced by taking a few minutes to find files with keywords, dates or other methods.
The feature is unlikely to escape the perception of it being delayed twice because it a) creeped people the hell out, and b) couldn’t be trusted to protect users’ security. It’ll be dead on arrival.
Is it really worth Microsoft pushing back against what’s already set in consumer’s mindsets? And what I believe is so true of most of these overreaching Gen AI features? That the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze.
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