Microsoft Will Release Recall on Copilot+ PCs This October

Microsoft’s AI-powered Recall feature gave everyone the creeps when it was announced earlier this year, so the software giant paused its planned release. Now, Microsoft says the release is back on. The refined and more secure version of Recall will begin arriving on select Windows 11 PCs this October. Ready or not, here comes AI.

Recall was supposed to be the banner feature welcoming the new breed of “Copilot+” PCs into the Windows fold. However, Microsoft miscalculated its customers’ comfort level with a robot that monitors everything they do on their PC. To say the response to Recall was negative would be an extraordinary understatement.

The gist of Recall is that it takes constant screenshots of your PC, storing those images in a database where on-device AI can process the data to make the contents searchable. It’s similar to Google’s new Screenshots app on the Pixel 9 series, but that feature only works with the screenshots you take manually—Recall is fully automated.

The idea of having an unencrypted record of everything that happens on a PC didn’t sit right with the internet. Microsoft quickly paused its beta testing of Recall, promising to address the shortcomings around privacy. Microsoft now claims it will deploy Recall with clearer settings and opt-in language, and the feature will utilize just-in-time decryption via Windows Hello to keep Recall data more secure. Here’s the full update from Microsoft.

With a commitment to delivering a trustworthy and secure Recall (preview) experience on Copilot+ PCs for customers, we’re sharing an update that Recall will be available to Windows Insiders starting in October. As previously shared on June 13, we have adjusted our release approach to leverage the valuable expertise of our Windows Insider community prior to making Recall available for all Copilot+ PCs. Security continues to be our top priority and when Recall is available for Windows Insiders in October we will publish a blog with more details.

Microsoft has invested heavily in generative AI, footing the bill for OpenAI’s elaborate server infrastructure for training and running large language models (LLMs). While this has pushed Microsoft’s valuation into the stratosphere, this new wave of AI has yet to prove its usefulness. The GPT-powered Copilot chatbot is reasonably good at what it does, but it’s probably not worth the billions spent so far. If it works, Recall might start making the case for generative AI on local machines instead of the cloud.

Credit: Qualcomm

When Recall begins rolling out in October, it’s only going to show up on PCs with Microsoft Copilot+ certification. Currently, that’s limited to machines with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip, an Arm-based processor with powerful AI acceleration. Current x86 CPUs don’t have the requisite 45 TOPS of AI performance required, and GPUs that theoretically have much greater AI processing capabilities don’t yet work with Copilot+ features.

In short, AI PCs are a mess. You could argue that we’re still early in this new era of artificial intelligence, but it seems like Microsoft should have more to show for the tens of billions of dollars it has spent on generative AI so far.