Windows 11 update — Microsoft has always crossed the line before, but this definitely takes the cake.
Microsoft’s new AI Recall (OS build 26100.712) lets you search your entire PC history. From your personal messages, your emails, your web browsers — everything can be ‘recalled’ thanks to the new update. How it works is that AI Recall silently saves screenshots (every 3 seconds, mind you) for local search. Microsoft’s new AI Copilot runtime is responsible for this and learns the context of the snapshots taken on your device.
There are plenty of things to cover about the problems that may surface from this update.
Beefy Processing Power is Required to Run This Feature
This newly introduced feature requires some beefy processing power to run. The feature is exclusive to Copilot+ branded computers, or in other words, computers that have powerful NPUs (Neural Processor Units).
Only Snapdragon X Elite processors (that’s built for AI) can currently run AI Recall. So, the standard processors we have on our standard computers right now aren’t capable of running AI models locally.
You can bet that the only processors capable of running AI Recall feature are the expensive ones. The standard ones we use right now would soon be obsolete, and therefore unfit for the new Windows 11. Talk about Déjà vu.
Get Ready for AI Recall to Take Away Your Storage
The AI Recall feature also takes up your storage space. We’re talking at least 25GB of storage to store all the snapshots in order for it to run properly. Otherwise, the Recall feature won’t work, at least not as intended.
The storage allocation for the snapshots will differ depending on your computer storage capacity, however. Let’s say your laptop comes with a 250GB hard drive, the Recall feature will take away 25GB by default. If your computer comes with a 512GB hard drive, it’ll take away 75GB of your storage. If you have a computer with a 1TB storage drive, the Recall feature will use about 150GB by default.
Windows 11 by default would already take away about 17–18GB of storage, and now they’re taking up even more storage with the AI Recall feature that is, honestly, unnecessary. That would add up to at most 168GB of storage (if you’re using a 1TB storage drive) by default, if you agree to leave the feature turned on.
You can still change the maximum storage for the snapshots in the settings, but our average Joe wouldn’t notice about this feature unless they take a very close look at every Windows 11 update they’re going to install on their computers.
Where does AI Recall Store Your Snapshots?
We’ve heard about how Google and Facebook stating that they won’t disclose any private information you have to the public by using their services, but we know that their business models run purely on advertising. So, our data, while not shared with the public, are shared with the third-party websites or applications that may serve you curated ads.
And that is what’s worrying about this new AI Recall feature by Microsoft.
The snapshots taken, as mentioned, will only be stored locally on your device, but it still proves to be a risk if left unmonitored. Microsoft tells us that they encrypted our snapshots with Device Protection and BitLocker, but having personal or sensitive information taken by the AI would introduce privacy violation (mind you, that the AI analyses every snapshot taken).
Your messages, the content of messages, your email, what you browse on the web — all of these are taken snapshots of by the AI and analysed for the sake of “convenient searching”.
Can You Stop AI Recall on Your Latest Windows Update?
You can restrict the AI from taking snapshots on certain applications or websites you visit to protect your privacy, yes, but to manually add these specific applications and web pages would just mean it’s a lot of work to do.
But, there’s a catch. The websites you add to be excluded from being taken snapshots of by AI Recall is only applicable on Microsoft Edge. Other browsers would still be affected by the snapshots. Another trick up Microsoft’s sleeve to force the users to use its products to make sure they can track every of their users’ movements.
You might as well turn it off altogether rather than leaving it on and risking snapshots of certain websites you do not want to be caught browsing by accident.
Verdict
Honestly, I’d like to believe that this is just another excuse from Microsoft to monitor its users to an extensive degree for data collection because nothing is private anymore these days. From how I see it, they’re using the so-called innovative AI to help them collect data from its users even more closely than they ever can on websites or applications they use on Windows.
With the new AI Recall feature introduced, it’s just another attempt only allow beefy computers to run the latest Windows 11 update with the features we obviously know are just another data-hoarding attempt by Microsoft. The snapshots won’t be uploaded to Microsoft, sure, but the AI that analyses the content of the snapshots still have your data. So yes, I am concerned with this feature. Why introduce something that would only drain the users’ computer resources even more for something that is hardly revolutionary?
If anything, Microsoft would only push people further and further away from Windows altogether with this move. Linux has become more and more tempting by the day, and the switch to other operating systems may just be the only option users have soon enough, which you can read more about here.
We’ll see how this turns out, nevertheless. Such a bold move, Microsoft.
