Microsoft's Recall AI is now more careful with your information
The feature is designed to remember everything you do on your computer, so you don't have to.
Recall AI is finally being re-released to select users after some security updates were made to it. Microsoft decided to take a step back for a while after hearing the voice of the people, but it looks like it's ready to go again.
Months ago, Microsoft announced Recall AI, a feature designed to remember everything you do on your computer, so you don't have to. But, this was quickly met with several complaints over how secure it is.
Several experts raised concerns about how secure personal information was with the AI feature taking snapshots of everything, including passwords and other personal information. And what made things worse was, that none of the screenshots captured were encrypted or saved to a secure storage, making it all vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Louis Eriakha
Microsoft heard all these complaints and announced a few changes to its long-awaited AI feature.
To tackle the first concern, Microsoft claims snapshots taken by Recall are always encrypted. The same goes for all Recall-related data. The company also stated that the encryption key is protected and accessible only via Windows Hello enhanced sign-in security. This way, no one can access anything without your prior authorisation.
In addition, Microsoft says all data will be processed locally in a secure environment called the Virtualization-based Security Enclave. Think of it as a dedicated portion of your device's memory that can only be accessed via Windows Hello sign-in security. By doing this, users don't have to worry about their information being seen by anyone, even Microsoft.
Microsoft also mentioned that all sensitive information like bank card numbers, passwords and the like are all filtered out before capture, thereby reducing the amount of private data stored on Recall. It also claimed that incognito tabs from Chrome and other supported browsers will not be captured.
But, if users aren't comfortable with any of these and would rather not increase the chances of their data getting leaked, Microsoft says Recall AI is an opt-in feature. In other words, users have to make a conscious decision to activate the feature and as a plus, there'll be a little picture at the top of the screen to let you know the feature is active.
According to a Windows blog post, because of all the requirements for Recall AI, it only operates on Copilot+ PCs that meet certain security standards.
And, to make sure everything works as intended, the company still hasn't committed to a widescale public launch and only made the feature available to select users for now. It looks like we still won't be getting the photographic memory tool anytime soon.
