Microsoft plans to start the rollout of Recall in October. The AI feature has already been widely and negatively discussed, claiming it could compromise privacy and personal data security.
Recall will be available on Windows 11 devices starting in October 2024. At that time, the feature will be available to a select group of Insiders program participants.
Changes unclear
Earlier, the plan was to make the feature available on CoPilot+ PCs, and the new Surface laptops with a Snapdragon X Elite. That fell through due to user protests. Then Microsoft suggested the plan to roll out the feature to Windows Insiders first after it would do some tinkering internally.
The tinkering now appears to be over. Microsoft says it is doing everything it can to roll out Recall “reliably and securely.” However, the company is still withholding specifications on the changes. “Security remains our top priority, and when Recall is available to Windows Insiders in October, we will publish a blog with more details,” the announcement reads.
Some changes were, however, shared a few days before the previously announced rollout date. Those included additional security measures, including the addition of an authentication method for using the Recall feature.
What is Recall?
To refresh, Recall is an AI feature that is always active and constantly takes screenshots of the activities being performed on a PC. The PC keeps all of these images after converting them to text format. The device can then search all the stored information at the user’s request. Say you saved a file, but you can’t remember what folder you put it in, exactly what editing you did to an image, or what time you made a hotel reservation in your browser; you can look this up in your PC’s photographic memory.
Also read: Microsoft makes Windows Recall an opt-in feature, is it enough?