It is perhaps the most-talked about Windows feature in years. At Build 2024 — the company's annual developer conference — Microsoft piqued the interest of users, developers and even Elon Musk with a new feature. Recall, a new AI-powered feature can remember and recall almost everything and anything. Think of it is as Windows getting a photographic memory.
Carolina Hernandez, principal product manager, Windows is the woman driving Recall for Windows. She spoke to Moneycontrol in an exclusive chat and shed light on how Recall came around and why Microsoft is being extra cautious when it comes to responsible AI. “I do believe that it is such a helpful feature for everyone and to run it locally on device is a big thing,” she says about Recall.
Hernandez has been working with Microsoft for close to 15 years now. She has seen — and worked on it extensively — the evolution of Windows to being an AI-powered operating system. If you are a Windows user then you would know that searching for files, pictures can be quite a task — something which Hernandez says people do sometimes complain about.
From literally nowhere to everywhere with Recall, it is a massive jump when it comes to searching on Windows. It is down to the AI magic sauce Microsoft is putting in Copilot+ PCs.
During the special event on May 20, Hernandez came on stage and demoed how Recall worked. There were quite a few audible “whoahs” in the audience as she executed a simple task on Windows -- finding an image of a blue dress. Recall — within seconds — went through the entire gamut on Windows and quickly found what Hernandez was looking for.
Moneycontrol got a hands-on demo of Recall at the event and it was certainly impressive. Search has never worked better on Windows and it is down to the new NPU and models that Microsoft is running on device. We tried it on the yet-to-launch Surface Laptop Copilot+ PC.
Hernandez says that it was critical to ensure that Recall works locally on device as anytime you do something on the cloud, there will be some amount of latency. “There’s snappiness all over it and, moreover, all our models are developed using Responsible AI principles at Microsoft. We make a trust promise and we want customers to believe that,” she explains why it was important for Recall to run locally on devices.
Everything you do on your PC is personal and Microsoft wants to ensure that everything on it remains safe and secure, says Hernandez.
Microsoft did a lot of “red teaming” on Recall and sufficient due diligence to bring fair and responsible AI experiences for customers, says Hernandez. “We want to eliminate biases, we have learnt from mistakes and which is why want to ensure that it is handled responsibly,” Hernandez adds. Yet, there are skeptics and initial reaction to Recall has been around user privacy.
Recall: Privacy concerns
The photographic memory bit did spook many, including Elon Musk, who called it a “Black Mirror episode” and said that he would turn it off. What Windows does is that it saves snapshots of your screen periodically. You can quickly search your snapshots to find things on a Copilot+ PC. This could be something you saw on Instagram or Facebook. Or an item you saw on Amazon or a document you shared with a colleague. Recall doesn't record audio or save continuous video. The screenshots has people worried. What happens if they land in the hands of a bad actor?
Microsot, however, says that Copilot+ PCs are designed so that even the AI running on your device can’t access your private content. Microsoft is going all the way to give full control to users. You can turn it off and can filter out apps and websites from being saved as snapshots.
Furthermore, Recall won’t save any content from your private browsing activity when you’re using Microsoft Edge, Firefox,, Google Chrome, or other Chromium-based browsers.
Also, Microsoft categorically states that evem if if two people share a device with different profiles they will not be able to access each other’s screenshots. So it’s Black Mirror-y but perhaps the skepticism on part of users — without trying the feature — is understandable. B
Having tried the feature, it is useful and does improve search on Windows dramatically. The controls seem easy to access and there was freedom to choose which apps and websites have and you do feel in control. For example, the snapshots can be completely disabled. Or you can pause them temporarily and apps can be filtered. Worse case scenario, you can delete all the snapshots at any given point of time.
Hernandez is excited and believes that Recall should end being beneficial to a lot of users. “We are hoping that people would love the feature and rely on it as it can be really beneficial,” she adds.
(The writer was in Seattle, Washington at the invitation of Microsoft)
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