AI-based user-facing feature in Windows 11
"Take a screenshot every few seconds' legitimately sounds like a suggestion from a low-parameter LLM that was given a prompt like 'How do I add an arbitrary AI feature to my operating system as quickly as possible in order to make investors happy?'"
—Signal spokesperson, quoted in The Register
The idea, as always, is not actually a bad one at bedrock. Microsoft aimed this at busy users, albeit forcibly and without much user control, enabling them to retrieve information that had previously been displayed on their screens. The OS does this by taking screenshots at intervals, saving the images to be analysed by a local AI model, which extracted data which was then stored in an unsecured database. The idea was that the user could scroll through or search for something they'd been doing. in their words, giving you
"the ability to enable you to quickly find and jump back into what you have seen before on your PC. You can use an explorable timeline to find the content you remember seeing before. You can also use semantic powered search and just describe how you remember something and Recall will retrieve the moment you saw it. Any photo, link, or message can be a fresh point to continue from. "¹
On the face of it, it's a worthy, possibly even noble desire; we've doubtless all had that "I read something earlier about this [insert vague memory], I wonder what it was, or whence it came?" Then it's on the tip of my tongue for hours, frustrating me as I try to mentally backtrack through my morning. Recall enables one to search through your past activity using natural language. For example, you could type "red bag" to find a shopping site you saw, or "Word document Bob sent me on Slack" to locate a specific file.
Of course, noble enterprise or not, when a preview of it was launched in an OS update in 2024, many people were up in arms over privacy and security issues. Seeing pitchforks and torches, Microsoft backed down and withdrew the preview, which of course had been launched on users with no warning and no security measures. The security was so weak (originally data was stored in the clear, i.e. unencrypted in an easily-accessible database. So easy was this information to find that anyone with physical access to a computer could reconstruct one's movements on the web, take a peek into email, documents being prepared or other private messages. And of course, at the back of many peoples' minds, the concern that at some future time, Microsoft themselves would get access to this private data to use in some nefarious way (selling to data brokers or sharing with governments or law enforcement agencies). I have read and watched reports of people "hacking" the recall databse and their horrified reactions. Word got out in the geek communities and the outrage was palpable. Of course for me, it was never going to b an issue; the closest i get to Microsoft products is if someone sends me a document created in Microsoft Office format (which on receipt, i immediately convert to the Open Document Format.
For a long while, we heard nothing of it, but Microsoft, never keen to shut down perfectly good potential, recently announced that it would be relaunched in Windows 11 as an opt-in feature (as all new features should be!) along with some basic security and privacy protections.
The quotation at the top is from a Signal Messenger spokesman, drawn from an interview discussing Signal's response to the reintroduction of the feature. In short, Signal have decided that their response will be to invoke Microsoft's own DIgital RIghts management controls to prevent Recall from snapshotting their Windows application. Their reasoning is really simple, and refreshing to read: Signal users use Signal to keep their conversations absolutely private, so why should Microsoft be able to harvest that for whatever reason? To quote a recent article in The Register (italics mine!):
Recall, which is not enabled by default, lacks granularity in how it captures its screenshots. While it will ignore incognito-mode browser windows, everything else is fair game. Signal prides itself on chat privacy and sees automatic screenshot capture of message windows as unacceptable.
In the absence of settings that developers can use to curb Microsoft's eye on the desktop, Signal has turned to DRM. Setting a DRM flag on an application window means Recall (and any other screenshotter) will ignore it.
Signal explained: "Apps like Signal have essentially no control over what content Recall is able to capture, and implementing 'DRM' that works for you (not against you) is the best choice that we had. It's like a scene in a movie where the villain has switched sides, and you can't screenshot this one by default either."
The new "Screen security" setting is on by default in Signal Desktop on Windows 11. Turning it off prompts a warning and requires user confirmation to continue.
in my opinion, Recall is yet another reason, were I to need one, to avoid Microsoft Windows. I could not trust the rascals in Redmond to not include elements of this in the telemetry they already collect from users like you. Frankly, I trust them as far as I could spit a rat.
¹ Microsoft Support
$ xclip -o | wc -w