Microsoft’s Recall AI Tool Is Making an Unwelcome Return

Security and privacy advocates are defending another tough battle Counter recallthe AI ​​tool launched in Windows 11 will take screenshots, index and store all the actions users perform every three seconds.

when Introduced a recall In May 2024, security practitioners condemned it thoroughly, thinking that malicious insiders, criminals or nation-state spies created a gold mine, even if they managed to gain some brief administrative access to Windows devices. Privacy advocates warn that recalls of abuse in an intimate partner violence environment are ripe. They also point out that by protecting sensitive disappearing content sent by an emissary of privacy protection (such as a signal), nothing stops recalling.

Complete recall

After a few months of rebound, Microsoft later suspended the recall. Thursday, the company explain It is reintroducing a recall. Currently, it is only available to insiders who access the Windows 11 Build 26100.3902 preview. The feature will be launched more widely over time. Microsoft officials wrote:

Recall (Preview)* Save time by providing a whole new way to search for things you see or accomplish on your PC. With the AI ​​capabilities of Copilot+ PC, you can now quickly find and return any application, website, image or document by describing its content. To use the recall, you will need to opt-in to save the snapshot, which is your active image, and register Windows Hello to confirm your presence so that only snapshots can be accessed. You always control which snapshots to save and can pause the snapshot at any time. When you use Copilot+ PC throughout the day for documents or presentations, video calls, and context switches across activities, recalls take regular snapshots and help you find things faster and easier. When you need to find or go back to a previously done work, turn on the recall and use Windows Hello for authentication. When you find what you want, you can reopen the app, website, or document, or use the click action to take action on any image or text in the snapshot you find.

Microsoft hopes the offer to opt-in and suspend recall capabilities will help calm the collective uprising that broke out last year. It may not be for a variety of reasons.

First, even if user A never chooses to recall, they cannot control the settings on user b through Z’s machine. This means that any user sent to them by User A takes a screenshot and processes it using optical role recognition and Copilot AI, which is then stored in an indexed database on other user devices. This will not break the sensitive material of various User A, including photos, passwords, medical conditions, and encrypted videos and messages. As Privacy Guide Writer Em Written on Mastodon:

Unfortunately, this feature will extract your information from any security software you may use and store it on that person’s computer in a possible more secure way.

Of course, this person can do all these screenshots manually anyway, but this feature makes it possible that even a meaningful person might not know it is on, or perhaps mistakenly think it’s safe enough.

This feature has not been fully released yet, but may be soon.

For others without the best interests of the user, the existence of an easy-to-search database that captures every sober moment of the machine will also be affluent. There is no doubt that such detailed archive materials will be subject to subpoena by lawyers and governments. Threat participants who manage to install spyware on their devices will no longer need to search for the most sensitive data stored there. Instead, they will mine memories like the browser database that stores passwords now.

Microsoft did not immediately reply a message asking why the feature had to be reintroduced after receiving such a cold reception in less than a year. For critics, recalls may still be one of the most harmful examples break downWhen the user’s benefits to the user are negligible, the recently cast term is the unwanted AI and other features in other functions.

This story originally appeared in ARS Technica.