Microsoft announced Friday that it is making changes to a new feature called “Recall,” turning it into an opt-in experience and adding more layers of security after experts raised concerns about the AI-powered tool unveiled last month.
Recall, which is rolling out as part of Microsoft’s new Copilot+ PCs initiative, takes regular screenshots of user activity on the machine, creating an index that can be queried using AI.
The feature received pushback from security and privacy leaders. Signal President Meredith Whittaker said the feature was a “dangerous honeypot for hackers.”
“We are updating the set-up experience of Copilot+ PCs to give people a clearer choice to opt-in to saving snapshots using Recall,” Microsoft exec Pavan Davuluri wrote in a blog post Friday. “If you don’t proactively choose to turn it on, it will be off by default.
The company also added new safeguards, including proof of presence to view a user’s timeline and search in Recall, and “just in time” decryption.
The Copilot+ PCs initiative combines Microsoft’s Copilot artificial intelligence technologies and its Windows PC operating system.
