The end of Windows 11's Recall AI feature? Microsoft postpones launch
When Copilot Plus PCs launch next week, it will be without the controversial Recall feature.
Recall was unveiled by Microsoft in May 2024 as the core feature of Copilot+ PCs. This new PC type comes equipped with a neural processing unit to process AI tasks on the device faster.
Microsoft, swimming on a wave of positive AI feedback and a stock price that gained nearly 100% since December 2023, was confident that Recall would give the new PC type a much needed boost.
In the higher-up offices at Microsoft, Recall must have sounded like a great idea. The feature captures the screen of the Windows device every five seconds to let AI process it. This allows users to search their entire activity using natural language.
The wave of criticism caught Microsoft by surprise. It can be broken down to the following points:
- Microsoft configured Recall to run automatically on Copilot+ PCs. Users had to opt-out of it manually.
- Recall's database was not protected while the system was up and running.
- The database would reveal a user's entire activity on the PC, including malware actors and law enforcement.
About two weeks later, Microsoft came forward to announce major changes to the Recall AI feature. The company announced that it would add an option to disable Recall during the initial setup, and add improved security around the feature.
Recall is being postponed
Microsoft published an update on its website. It has been added to the post about the upcoming security and usability changes of Recall.
In it, Microsoft says that Recall will not be available as a preview on Copilot+ PCs starting June 18, 2024. Instead, Microsoft has made the decision to preview Recall in the Windows Insider Program first.
It still plans to make Recall available for al Copilot+ PCs soon, according to the post.
The decision to postpone the launch of Recall on regular devices, Copilot+ PCs are not test devices for the most part, was made to "ensure the experience meets our high standards for quality and security", writes Microsoft in the post.
These standards were seemingly ignored during the initial Copilot+ PCs and Recall rush.
It is possible that Microsoft needs more time to implement the security and usability changes that it promised for June 18th.
Microsoft decided against testing Recall in the Windows Insider Program. One likely explanation is that the company wanted to come out with a bang when it announced the new Copilot+ PCs.
Recall: Dead on Arrival?
For Microsoft, Recall is the main feature that makes Copilot+ PCs worth buying. The company has not revealed lots of other exclusive features that make these PCs special.
The only other feature that comes to mind is Automatic Super Resolution, which aims to improve the quality of media.
There is also a question that no one has answered yet. Who is going to benefit from Recall? The feature is very broad, capturing nearly everything by default that happens on a PC.
I cannot see many home or business users making use of it on a regular basis. Yes, it has a novelty factor and there are likely individual use cases that get a productivity boost out of it.
I think that Microsoft should reconsider its approach with Recall. Instead of using it to broadly capture everything, it could make Recall a feature that captures only content that is picked by the user or system administrator.
Recall could be configured to capture content of specific apps or folders only, for instance Office programs. This would give users control over the feature.
What about you? Do you think that Microsoft will launch Recall later this year in the updated state?
This feature was a terrible idea. A lot of Windows 11 is bloatware.
MS just sits it out, wait til ppl have other focus and implements it anyway sooner or later.
I hope one day I can read an article here at Ghacks that only says “the end of Windows 11”!
That’ll happen with Windows 12, rejoice :)
— Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/06/is-microsoft-trying-to-commit-.html
— TotalRecall – a ‘privacy nightmare’?
This very simple tool extracts and displays data from the Recall feature in Windows 11, providing an easy way to access information about your PC’s activity snapshots.
https://github.com/xaitax/TotalRecall?tab=readme-ov-file
When will windows recall will be ready? N E V E R – just look at the piece of trash of operating systems microsoft has been vomiting for the last 10 years – endless fixes, causing more problems with more fixes, etc etc. Recall was just an idea to spy a lot more into what users do with their computers and nothing more. Only idiots would need a computer to make copies of their screens every few seconds – well perhaps that would have attracted the typical apple user as their operating system has had a somewhat similar “feature” for years.
The only AI I want is Kitt from Knight Rider. IRL PCs don’t need this “AI” garbage and never did. We just need an OS that gets out of our way and lets us use our damn Computers. With all the nonsense getting baked into Windows 11 – the telemetry, Cortana, Copilot, and now this insane “Recall” — all a huge privacy risk – I really feel like switching to something like Linux Mint, and no, I’m not a Linux shill; it’s called “enshittification” and it’s happening, slowly, before our eyes.
Probably the most unsettling to me is that Microsoft thought having Recall activated by default was even the correct way to introduce it. This should have always been at the very least a opt in feature and more importantly a feature that should be optionally installed as well. This was Microsoft moment of exposure to how they perceive personal data. I want no part of Microsoft CoPilot, Recall or any other AI creation Microsoft dreams up.
Windows 11 is the worst failure of Microsoft, because they had other many failures before however they have now the knowledge to fix all the issues. They don’t fix them because they don’t want. One single example: the horrible taskbar nailed at the bottom of the screen, completely useless crap, clear like water itself! I won’t ever miss the W11 disorder, because it’s a complete disorder.
Thanks for the article! :]
No, it won’t go away. Microsoft is just marshalling their spin doctoring team to euphemistically rationalize why everybody should just allow M$ to rape their privacy. One has to wonder how much the U.S. government (primarily the NSA) is paying M$ to allow access to that information.
Trust me, we haven’t seen the last of “Recall”.
Thanks Martin. Additional good info over Recall by Günter Born, another German writer who writes partially in English:
https://borncity.com/win/2024/06/14/windows-11-copilotpc-will-be-released-without-recall/#more-34173
Microsoft lost their way sometime after Windows 7 SP 2 (the last real UPgrade of Windows) and Windows 8.
Everything Windows 8 and later has largely been garbage sprinkled with minor fixes.
Yes. My first home PC had XP, it was really nice, colorful and worked just fine, I don’t remember any intrusive behavior or useless bloatware programs. Then Vista came, I skipped it because my PC was initially too weak for Vista and I got to experience it later on a laptop. Vista was also good, it looked nice and shiny and I liked it quite a lot too.
Then Windows 7 released and it was even more amazing than Vista – the default colors were focused on azure blue, glass, nice and slick combination of gradients, gloss, shadows, reflection, etc.
It looked amazing.
At this point, I was already used to looking forward to new versions of Windows, when I heard about Windows 8, originally I was excited, but after I installed it, it was so ugly, hard to use and horrible, I moved back to Windows 7 and stayed with it until 2015 when again I was excited about Windows 10 hoping it will be better, but quickly got disappointed again and stayed with Windows 7 again until I bought a new computer in 2019 whose CPU didn’t allow me to install Windows 7, so I was forced to use Windows 10.
I was again mildly (but very cautious and disillusioned) about Windows 11, installed it, I was initially happy it was less ugly than the blocky, flat and boring 8 and 10, but the even more restricted freedom in 11, the intrusive settings that would reset themselves on each update, Windwos acting even more like malware, made me return to Windows 10.
Until recently when all that craze BS about stupid AI-everything started and I heard they force-installed the spyware Copilot even on Windows 10, so I had to stop updates… until March this year when I finally decided to move to Linux and I’m still using Linux with no plans to ever go back to the garbage malware and spyware Windows again.
Looks like Windows will never get better from there on out, it will only get wore – more locked, less freedom, more intrusive, online-only, AI crap-everywhere.
Until Windows stop being a monopoly, it will never get better, because they will never have to work for their money, they expect people to just upgrade to the newer and worse version of Windows and they aren’t wrong – most people are lazy, ignorant, don’t care about privacy and don’t want to educate themselves so they will keep using Windows, some of them will keep complaining and do nothing about it, the rest, who are so ignorant they don’t even have anything to complain about will be happy.
They should discontinue Windows 11 altogether and return to Windows 10. A total failure due to an incomplete team of personnel. Everyone associated with Windows 11 should be embarrassed and fired.
Recalled Recall …
Looks like once again the “Just do it” slogan has struck.
How can a powerful company such as Microsoft do without previously and thoroughly test, anticipate deployment implications?
Will Microsoft launch Recall later this year in the updated state? No idea and, should I use an OS including this controversial feature, I’d hope it’d be opt-out or at least allow the user to disable it, which would definitely be my choice. Recall is the cheerleader of Copilot+ as I understand it. Can a team win without cheer leading?
What a dumb title… now delaying is ending? please be serious.
Like if delaying = polishing or having to fix issues with some NPU or ARM processors from partners was not important.
The title is : “The end of Windows 11’s Recall AI feature? Microsoft postpones launch”
“The end of Windows 11’s Recall AI feature?” is a question (that’s what the question mark means).
“Microsoft postpones launch” is a fact
The question is related to the fact. For those having problems with the construction of a sentence, the title could have been : “Does postponing Windows’ 11’s Recall feature mean it’s bound to be removed?”
That’s the same question, all in one. What’s dumb with this question?
If we state “Your comment is dumb” and if we ask “Is your comment dumb?” do agree it’s not the same thing. Is it?
It might be helpful for people with, um, um … I mean it might assist those that, um, um… It could help people who, um, um ….
Recall should only be an option for corporate PC’s where the IT-department can, and will, go through every 5 seconds of your workday on the company computer. That company will be very popular, you’ll see. People will line up to work for such a wonderful company. China will embrace this new feature. So will the muslim world. Adolf Putin already has this installed everywhere. Another scenario where it will be very useful is in toxic relationships. Nasty divorces, domestic violence, murder, broken families, traumatized children..you name it, Microsoft’s got your back. For the majority of the users it will be complete and total useless garbage. Much like Windows 10 & 11 is already.
Recall doesn’t just need to be postponed, it needs to be removed from the operating system altogether.
I could see it being very useful in my job. I’m a business analyst and I talk to lots of different people in great detail about their systems. Being able to go back to this kind of detail afterwards would help me a lot.
Obviously, if you want to subjugate a population, you need to do so incrementally, gradually.
This was too big of a jump, best to step three steps back and give it a couple more years for the next four steps. We’ll get there eventually, ,just not that fast.
Calm down, the goal of any company is to create dependencies, features and services which people will be attracted to, get used to, then not know how they can live without, that’s how you “hook” a customer.
No need to talk about “subjugation”, this is just ruthless cold-blooded capitalism.
@bruh
Respectfully, I suggest you read “The Psychology of Thought Control” by Meerloo and everything by Hanna Arendt.
The slow creep of banal evil is real and is often sold to the market as convience.
If you are feeling really frisky, diving into Kant’s moral philosophy and “Abolition of Man” by CS Lewis wouldn’t hurt. Neither would a dive into the differences between Keynesian, Austrian & Chicago school economics. Hayek, Mises, Friedman, Williams and Sowell are all worth the time.
None of these works are perfect however they do expose some rather uncomfortable truths about the human condition that everyone should be aware of and guard against… especially before getting into business.
@bruh you are in dire need of a lesson in economics, also not everyone is up for game of just the tip.
@Anonymous and @Nonya,
You guys are crazy, and hyperbolic – Microsoft is a company, a huge one – you are gonna have a hard time convincing me they have overarching underhanded intentions, apart from maximizing profit.
They dumped a lot of money into AI and want to maximise ROI, they are trying to create solutions with it, to problems which don’t really exist, but that’s what salesmen are supposed to do, they’re supposed to convince you that you need their shiny new thing.
The thought behind copilot/recall is along the lines of “what if we could have a smart companion thing, which can tell you about what you did previously, and help you use your computer”, they do not care about the data/privacy implications, to them the ends justify the means.
@Bruh
Don’t disagree with that at all actually. Just don’t believe that the excuse of “just doing business” or “just doing my job” passes muster is all.
By ignoring the data / privacy / security issues you mentioned, they have created via Recall, Copilot, et. al, they are, IMO, perpetuating the continued slow march towards the banality of evil while marketing it as a convience.
Believe the slight difference is that many believe generating profit is the primary job of business. Profits are incredibly important. The lifeblood necessary to survive but not at the expense of stakeholder value.
Win, win or no deal is a lot different than milk your customers data and wallets. Might be crazy and hyperbolic yet it does have a level of historic precidence.
@Nonya,
“Just doing business”, you do realise that like all companies, Microsoft looks around and reads the room, for the most part they too follow trends and cultural shifts, and do whatever they think they can get away with, and whatever they think is most profitable. They are but a snowflake in the avalanche, and to blame an individual snowflake for the 3 meters of snow that engulfed your village is wrong.
This is one of the few rare opportunities (that big companies would kill for) where Microsoft is actually at the forefront and supposedly are are “setting their own trends” instead of following behind others – to them there is big money in this.
I look at these features (recall, copilot), and I do not see “evil”, sure, I know how these “features” work, and because of that, I’d never use them, but people are morons, worse still, they are morons who do not want to think or learn, Microsoft knows this, which is why they bank on the majority of people also not caring about privacy.
Maybe I am cynical but this whole endeavor is a way for Microsoft to “wow” (or “woo”?) the unknowing into being impressed and amazed, and it’s working – loads of people use ChatGPT and the like, the OS integrations are just the next logical step for them.
We are in an environment where “milking” customers is the norm, to behave like this doesn’t make Microsoft terrible, only as bad as all the other players (which is fine to them).
Look up “unique unites us” (in quotation marks) followed by the keyword Microsoft, see the top result, MS’s new marketing trick – they are winning.