15 ms·

Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

• bayofpigs 2y ago
  [dead]
• dclaw 2y ago
  s/delay/terminate
• visarga 2y ago
  Meanwhile Apple Intelligence recalls across all apps with no backlash. I personally like this idea, should be done in a thoughtful and safe way, but recalling your logs is more useful than searching anew. I see the same double standard with Google's generative search vs OpenAI's chatGPT with search - when Google gets it wrong, it's a big issue, but not for the other.
  • ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
    The power of trust (and brand loyalty)
    • callalex 2y ago
      (And completely different implementations)
  • Dalewyn 2y ago
    I feel Recall got excessive backlash because of how ubiquitous and far reaching Windows is, and critics basically live and die by finding something popular to bitch about. There are already many things that record our data and actions that most of us are otherwise fine with. Browsing history, Undo in any number of productivity software, search histories both local (eg: Windows) and remote (eg: Google, Bing), password managers and Post-Its on monitors(tm), chat logs, vidja gaem save files, and more. Some of the issues floated like the seemingly complete lack of encryption are valid, but the overall response indeed felt very overblown and hypocritical.
    • davesmylie 2y ago
      > Browsing history, Undo in any number of productivity software, search histories both local (eg: Windows) and remote (eg: Google, Bing), password managers and Post-Its on monitors(tm), chat logs, vidja gaem save files, and more. None of these are taking screenshots of your entire desktop, using OCR and AI to summarize all text/secrets displayed and storing them in a single centralized, location, (currently) easily exfiltrated and searched by any one gaining access to your desktop They made the right call to delay and revisit this.
      • Dalewyn 2y ago
        Is there a difference between that and the others? I'm not seeing one fundamentally and brutally speaking. Also, if a hostile has access to your computer then all bets are off. Nothing matters at that point besides how quickly you can remove that access if it's even possible and whether you can deal with the fallout.
        • davesmylie 2y ago
          I probably would have agreed once that someone physically having access to your computer was as bad as things could get. Given the choice now though between someone having access to my computer, _or_ someone having physical access to my computer as well as a database with a detailed and lengthy history of every secret i've ever seen in my terminal or web browser, as well every bit of employer or customer data that I've seen whilst working, as well as well ... everything else personal, all in one nice tidy package they could download and search as they pleased - I think the former would end up not being quite as bad things could get.
        • jononor 2y ago
          The Microsoft approach will slurp up passwords/tokens, as well as anything in incognito browser window, etc. Things that are explicitly designed to be private. And it may have stored images, not just text.
          • 2y ago
  • crystaln 2y ago
    Their implementation is entirely different. This is like comparing Telegram to Signal.
    • sprobertson 2y ago
      More like comparing Instagram to Signal
  • oefrha 2y ago
    When did Apple announce they’re going to start taking screenshots of entire screens and storing them? Windows has had a (crappy) unified search “across all apps” for years and there’s been no backlash AFAIK.
    • iLoveOncall 2y ago
      They didn't, and they wouldn't. Yet, for all we know and ever will know, it's exactly how their feature might work. The only reason people aren't outraged at Apple is because they won't be able to access the directory with all the screenshots unlike on Windows. Both implementations are awful. Apple's one is probably the worst one actually, because it sends some data to Apple's servers for processing (probably most), when Microsoft runs everything on the device.
      • kbf 2y ago
        >Yet, for all we know and ever will know, it's exactly how their feature might work. We already know how it works, it’s based on App Intents. It’s how Shortcuts has worked for years, just instead of meticulously making your shortcuts for each automation you want to do, you essentially get an ML model to make one on the fly.
      • rsynnott 2y ago
        > Yet, for all we know and ever will know, it's exactly how their feature might work. … Wait, how do you think they’d keep _that_ one secret?
        • iLoveOncall 2y ago
          By encrypting the data on your device with a key that only they have? It's extremely simple.
  • ketzo 2y ago
    Are we really comparing a userland, unencrypted-at-rest SQLite database with Apple's app sandbox + secure enclave?
    • hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
      To be evenhanded, encrypting SQLite at rest is a well-solved problem. Dr. Richard Hipp and his merry men even sell an official extension to do so. Plenty of third party FOSS solutions also exist for this. I feel if that were the case I'd suddenly feel a lot more comfortable with the MS approach than the Apple approach.
      • mjg59 2y ago
        Under what circumstances would someone have access to the database but not the key?
        • hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
          Well, presumably under the circumstances where you'd prefer that.
          • mjg59 2y ago
            How?
      • karlgkk 2y ago
        Encryption isn’t the problem here, it’s key management. And Microsoft’s solution was borderline useless
    • postmodest 2y ago
      Apple's competitors lose the PR war if they don't post to social media!
  • ankurdhama 2y ago
    MS recall captures screenshot, analyze them, extract data from them and create a database index of these things so you can search them. Apple AI essentially provides API hooks that apps can use to expose actions and data to the model. Currently it seems Apple own apps does that but any app owner can decide to support this or not. Two completely different approach.
    • str3wer 2y ago
      and it was possible for any user on windows to have access to these screenshots
    • azinman2 2y ago
      Not only that but the data is what is exposed to spotlight - an api that’s existed forever. iOS 18 just has much better search over the same data.
    • visarga 2y ago
      > Two completely different approach. Just semantics. In the end Apple has access to everything, like MS.
      • mimikatz 2y ago
        It isn't there are large real world implications and difference in what each does and what risk it exposes to the end user.
      • DougN7 2y ago
        I suspect Apple doesn’t have access to everything typed into a web form, or in a notes app, even if those values are erased/backspaces, not saved, not submitted. But Recall does. All usernames in all apps/websites. The content of every single web page you visit, not just the URL. The content of every email you read, every document you open of any kind in any app. Apple _might_ spy on some of this. Recall WOULD record ALL of that. Very different in my opinion.
    • jwrallie 2y ago
      To me it sounds that anyone could implement Microsoft’s approach as an app, there is no reason for it to be bundled with the OS. The only difference would be it would cost users token costs directly as opposed to be paid by other means.
  • greenthrow 2y ago
    You are failing to appreciate how the things are different and this is why you are baffled by the different responses.
  • riffraff 2y ago
    Personally, I feel about Apple Intelligence only slightly more positive than MS Recall. I mean, sure, private cloud looks as good as something can be without being open source and self-hosted, but it seems nobody considered the fact that I do not want everything I do to be tracked. If this was a per-app opt-in then maybe but as it has been presented this is pure distopia.
  • logicchains 2y ago
    >when Google gets it wrong, it's a big issue, but not for the other. Because Google was presenting the AI-generated answer as the top query result, implying it's the most relevant/factual answer. OpenAI (and Bing) make it clear you're talking to an AI chatbot, which most people wouldn't expect to be as reliable/accurate as the first result in Google search.
  • pjmlp 2y ago
    There is some backslash, however besides brand recognition, Apple has taken all the steps to approach this with security first, features second, to the point that they even have a special OS version for the server side, unikernel style, everything taken away not needed to AI compute or networking, using Swift, and the secure enclave. Not a cleartext SQL Lite database, with stuff written either in C or C++ with COM, as the WinDev business unit loves to do.
    • stby 2y ago
      On the other hand, Recall doesn't even have a server side, right? Ignoring the SQLite access issue for a moment, I'll always prefer a local solution.
      • pjmlp 2y ago
        Microsoft says it is local, how much you end up believing that is up to you. Those of us with long Windows development experience certainly don't.
  • rsynnott 2y ago
    While I'm not a huge fan of Apple's thing, either, it isn't the same level of ridiculously over-aggressive data collection.
• ulfw 2y ago
  What are MSFT Product Managers doing these days? This was one of the worst launches in recent years. Has Microsoft fallen victim to AI panic like Google has? Do people dare to speak up and say no to Satya and Sundar?
  • surfingdino 2y ago
    Microsoft suffers from bad memories of dismissing the importance of internet, then missing the boat (a failing 3-4 times) on personal music players and music/video streaming, followed by failing to capture any meaningful smartphone or tablet market share, and still playing catch up in the cloud computing space. They went all in on AI, because they want to own the next platform that others will build on top of. Their problem is simple, AI is not the next platform to build on top of. It is not the next internet, not the next operating system, it is a research project with way too much funding.
    • IshKebab 2y ago
      AI is way beyond a research project at this point, and the level of funding doesn't seem totally unreasonable given its potential. But I do agree it isn't a "platform".
    • pjmlp 2y ago
      Additionally, they messed up so much the WinRT/UWP/WinUI developer experience, that most of us that advocated for the technology, feel betrayed and aren't going to advocate for anything else, other than regular .NET and the pre-Windows 8 desktop technologies.
  • beefnugs 2y ago
    Here is some brand new level of bullshit happening: they are deploying these NPU on all new processors. But with ZERO proper user consent and control. The bare minimum of proper operating system or driver feature is that I can choose NO I dont want anything running on my NPU, unless I approve it specifically. Fuck youtube's new eyeball tracking on their ads running on MY hardware without the slightest consent.
• skilled 2y ago
  https://archive.is/X48nn https://archive.is/X48nn
• ruuda 2y ago
  > The lack of a formal market for land has not made land any cheaper, it has simply shifted the price from being denominated in money-dollars, to time-dollars and pain-in-the-butt-dollars. Vitalik writes about this too: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2021/08/22/prices.html https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2021/08/22/prices.html
  • slicktux 2y ago
    Off topic??
    • reaperman 2y ago
      Definitely off topic. Should have been posted somewhere here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40676408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40676408
    • ruuda 2y ago
      Apologies, wrong tab, I meant to post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40677941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40677941
• azinman2 2y ago
  I don’t understand how the gap was so large between them saying this data was encrypted/protected and people easily being able to get the raw data. I know once you’re on someone’s machine in a way all bets are off, but it feels like this should have had far greater security attached to it. It doesn’t seem to even match their promises. Couldn’t this have been seen a mile away?
  • sqeaky 2y ago
    I know microsoft has crap security, but in this case they probably aren't lying about it being encrypted. Encryption for storage simply isn't a solution that most people need for security of data on their devices. It pretty much only protects against the threat of a device being stolen, and that simply isn't the way most people lose their data. Almost every virus runs as the main user of the PC, so almost every virus will be able to decrypt the recall storage. Microsoft should know this so it is easy to say they were disingenuous even raising this as a point. If Windows is to be secure it needs to fundamentally change its security model and that means breaking compatibility with a huge number of applications. So that probably can't happen.
    • azinman2 2y ago
      macOS and iOS have later rolled out methods of data containerization on top of existing file systems. Microsoft certainly has the talent to do this as well. They shouldn’t have shipped a product without the necessary requirements in place - it’s quite obvious the sensitivity of this data.
  • ankushnarula 2y ago
    The fact that Recall data and screenshots are only protected at the file system level reinforces the reality that Windows lacks user-centered privacy and security. Microsoft is content to rest their laurels instead on system level control.
• npalli 2y ago
  Good call on the no-call for Recall.
• erulabs 2y ago
  considering how much worse this looks than just launching it and fixing it after while claiming it’s all fine and good, kinda makes you wonder just how bad it really was.
• mannewalis 2y ago
  Lol this isn't about helping users, this is about creating training data for MS to use to train their models.
• digging 2y ago
  This is confusing and vague to me, which I believe is exactly the intent. It focuses on security, reiterates that security is their top priority (and we know that this is untrue). What were the security problems? They don't even allude to the existence or detection of any specific security problems. It sounds to me like they're figuring out a new marketing approach, or they're softening the blow by "listening to users" and then rolling out more slowly, when outrage has died down and people will just accept it.
  • pcloadletter_ 2y ago
    Or maybe they have to figure out how to actually make it work
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • segasaturn 2y ago
    My takeaway is that Microsoft has been trying to boil the frog, but slipped and turned the temperature up too quickly. They're retreating for now, but make no mistake that Recall will slowly trickle back into Windows under another name. Every major power broker wants something like Recall to become the norm - bosses to spy on their employees, governments to spy on their citizens/enemies, and tech CEO's to collect training data for AI and target more ads at end users.
    • ttyprintk 2y ago
      I expect it to emerge as an accessibility feature for cognitive memory loss. Imagine not remembering the name of your email client or the color of its icon, but Siri With Screenshots can pull up an important email thread.
      • vundercind 2y ago
        Christ. I just went through this stuff with a loved one, for a few years. “Hey Siri, what did mom do today?” “Asked 214 times when you were getting back in town, because she has not seen you in a long time.” “I’ve been back for two months and I saw her this morning.” “That is what I told her, each time.” “Ok. What else did she do?” “Nothing.” Yeesh. Some Black Mirror shit. [edit] not to crap on how nice that really might be for a lot of people. Dementia’s just… well, pretty messed up and sad, I guess, and bringing machines into the mix can be weird.
• pcloadletter_ 2y ago
  But hey, at least Microsoft got to increase their stock price from the initial, hasty announcement, right?
  • ivanjermakov 2y ago
    Overpomise first, underdeliver second
• nextworddev 2y ago
  This is what happens when a 3 trillion dollar company moves fast and breaks things
  • resource_waste 2y ago
    It doesnt help that M$'s reputation is awful. How many different ad screens are on windows 11? How many privacy things did I need to check or uncheck for privacy? Why did the ads come back after I disabled it? Why did onedrive takeover my documents? Microsoft isnt trustworthy. I have begun my migration away. I only use Microsoft for programs my customers use. MSTeams(webapp isnt good enough for high stakes b2b), and Windows for a specific niche application. Everything Microsoft says is met with an anti-consumer lens. They earned it.
    • FactKnower69 2y ago
      This feature wouldn't even be the worst thing in the world if it was strictly opt-in like every other piece of software you would run on your computer; the reason everyone is so fucking sick of Microsoft's rollouts is the way they trample over user consent by replacing every instance of "No" in their UI with "Not now" or "Remind me later", eventually hijacking your computer and forcing it to shut down and install updates while you were using it if you dare postpone their "optional" rollout for too long It's just extra funny when the software you're being bullied into nonconsensually installing on your own machine is also literally spyware that screenshots your desktop every few minutes
    • wvenable 2y ago
      > How many different ad screens are on windows 11? How many are there? Admittedly I use a Start Menu replacement so I don't see ads there but I don't see any ads anywhere else.
• idkdotcom 2y ago
  [dead]
• skilled 2y ago
  And why the corporate speak? They messed up and that’s the end of it. Where is the acknowledgement of getting owned two days after announcement? Where is the acknowledgment of having an understanding of the issues this poses and how they are going to address them? Make no mistake that this feature was in development for a long time, with resources allocated to it. And throughout all that process, Microsoft thought this is a great and safe feature for the users. And yet here we are.
  • ttyprintk 2y ago
    If they're not careful, then the neural processor and even Pluton become a badge that the machine runs Copilot Windows, and new machines not meeting those requirements just run Windows.
  • rsynnott 2y ago
    > And throughout all that process, Microsoft thought this is a great and safe feature for the users. I’m fairly sure plenty of people in Microsoft would have realised that this was a terrible feature. But sometimes, it is easier to just let emperors go shopping for new clothes.
• Rinzler89 2y ago
  What a dumb feature. They had to get all that backlash to understand why everyone wouldn't want it. Is someone at Microsoft taking crazy pills to think consumers would be into that? They pulled the exact same shit 11 years ago when they launched the Xbox One as a "home media center" instead of a gaming console and it came with mandatory always-on internet connection, disc games DRM tied to a single console unable to lend them to a friend, and with Kinect camera, and just like this time, it took community backlash to get them to roll back on this shit while Sony was having the time of their lives seeing how the succes of the PS4 was already in the bag from the start before they evens started. What is wrong with them? Does Microsoft think consumers are stupid masochists who enjoy being shit on by megacorporations while paying for the privilege? Does Nadella not look into the stupid decisions his execs are making and make necessary organizational adjustments to prevent stuff like this? People shit on Steve Balmer but I don't remember Microsoft's products having that level of anti-consumer disrespect during his tenure. Sure Microsoft Zune and Window Phone 7-10 eventually flopped, by not because they had anti-consumer features but because they were too late and not very popular. And the Xbox 360, despite the Red ring of death was still smash hit. Now, Microsoft is an even richer company that during Balmer's tenure but it's products seem way more anti-consumer. Edit: sorry for the overuse of the word shit, I'm just angry
  • isoprophlex 2y ago
    They keep confusing regular old customers with the stupid masochist enterprise customers they also sell to, forgetting that the experience of spending your own money on a poop sandwich is something entirely else than spending your bosses' money on one.
  • yakz 2y ago
    Adobe just forced through a EULA update (for creative software tools) that was at least somewhat widely interpreted as practically granting Adobe ownership of the work product of their users and their stock is (/checks notes) up 14% today.
    • Rinzler89 2y ago
      Wallstreet rewards rent seeking.
• nimbius 2y ago
  In summary: the only customers that matter --corporations paying site licenses-- declared this to be an unacceptable business risk. Anyone who is still using windows in 2024 and isnt a multinational business or llc gets what they deserve.
  • UberFly 2y ago
    I'm neither of those things and Windows 10 Enterprise is working fine for me. Many of us (for now) are still able to corral our OS.
    • rchaud 2y ago
      What about when Win10 falls out of support in Oct 2025?
      • UberFly 2y ago
        Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC is supported until 2030.
  • pavel_lishin 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • Filligree 2y ago
      Worse, using computers without being experts on them.
  • jcfrei 2y ago
    Not quite true: The other huge group of customers is simply gamers.
    • chabons 2y ago
      And more generally, consumers of Windows-only software, of which there is still a ton.
• barbariangrunge 2y ago
  What is recall ai?
  • tedivm 2y ago
    It's a system microsoft designed that took regular screenshots of what was happening on the desktop, stored them in a sqlite database, and then allowed people to ask their "AI" questions that would take into account literally everything they user has ever done on their computer. People pointed out that this would record things like people watching porn, typing in banking credentials, viewing bills, filing taxes, etc etc. The thread of having these sqlite database leaked, combined with the amount of malware and randomware already out there, made a lot of security folks get very very concerned.
    • simonw 2y ago
      I didn't think Recall was about answering questions - there was no LLM component - so much as it was about being able to search your history, based on a combination of SQLite FTS against OCRd text plus CLIP-style embeddings-based semantic search against the content of those images.
      • tedivm 2y ago
        > Microsoft says Recall lets you find anything you've seen or done on your PC with a simple search query, and it's powered by state-of-the-art large language models, which can understand various content on your PC, like text, images, and videos. It works in any application, so you can search across your computer. https://www.wired.com/story/everything-announced-microsoft-surface-event-2024/ https://www.wired.com/story/everything-announced-microsoft-s...
        • simonw 2y ago
          Weird. I got the impression they were using embedding models (which I think of as LLM-adjacent) but not actual LLMs. See notes here: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jun/5/ai-features-in-microsoft-recall/ https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jun/5/ai-features-in-microsof...
• neogodless 2y ago
  I'm a bit confused by the headline chosen for the submission (but the update doesn't do much to clarify). The original is this: Update on the Recall preview feature for Copilot+ PCs > Recall will now shift from a preview experience broadly available for Copilot+ PCs on June 18, 2024, to a preview available first in the Windows Insider Program (WIP) in the coming weeks. To be clear, it may be delayed for public release, but it is still shipping to Insiders (possibly on June 18, 2024 but in the coming weeks indicates later). > With that in mind we are announcing updates that will go into effect before Recall (preview) ships to customers on June 18. Further... > ...we plan to make Recall (preview) available for all Copilot+ PCs coming soon.
  • Hasu 2y ago
    The headline is correct. I have seen people believe that "indefinite" means "permanent", but it just means "undetermined". It is delayed, but we (and perhaps Microsoft) do not know for how long, so the delay is indefinite.
  • kmlx 2y ago
    > Copilot+ PCs not being accustomed with microsoft products i initially read this as copilot “plus” pcs.
• SrslyJosh 2y ago
  Relevant link: https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-windows-recall-privilege-escalation/ https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-windows-recall-privile... TL;DR: Recall's DB can be accessed by any malicious app running with user-level privileges. =)
• ChicagoDave 2y ago
  This is only the beginning of AI-centric offerings that were oversold and will be delayed or quietly abandoned. LLMs are nice for simple things, but they’ve already reached their limits. No amount of data will solve the iteration and complexity problems.
  • surfingdino 2y ago
    Every month I am in meetings where LLMs are being considered for applications they are absolutely not the right fit, but the answer to my concerns is "we need more AI advocates". These conversations are led by people who never actually read a single paper on LLMs or tried them in real life. They have no idea about risks, but plough on because their clueless bosses told them to come up with a plan to use AI.
    • potatolicious 2y ago
      I remain very skeptical that most companies or products can or should integrate with LLMs - and I say this as someone who works on a LLM-based product! Overall I feel like our industry has lost the plot to a large degree. Hype has always to some degree exceeded the merits of the technology-of-the-month, but the last few cycles have been truly extraordinary in terms of the gap between the breathless hype and the reality of the tech. It's LLMs now but before it was crypto. It just seems like we're stagnating as an industry, and rather focus our efforts on the hard R&D needed to reach the next Big Thing, we've decided it's much easier just to focus on cults of personality combined with vast over-hypedness.
      • surfingdino 2y ago
        Investors want their 10x returns. It's worse than you expect. They know nothing and reject scientific papers that discuss problems with LLMs. They were told by marketers that all problems with LLMs can be solved by feeding them good data... which is a sneaky way for LLM operators to obtain access to data they should never be allowed anywhere near. People with the collective brain of a Handforth Parish Council are working on strategies for using AI on PII data. Imagine the cretins from the Office discussing AI and you get the picture.
• 7thpower 2y ago
  This is not a must have feature for me, but I am interested to see how it unfolds and I can definitely see it being useful in the future. I do think they bungled the launch by not thinking through the security implications, and particularly how many sensitive threads this crosses. That being said, they took a risk, it did not go over well, and they’re adjusting. I am sure I will get flamed, but I appreciate the approach.
  • bachmeier 2y ago
    I think there's more to it than that. After a while, they say "We're going to send some of your information into the cloud to give you a better experience." Then a while after that, you have to click the button giving permission to send all your information to the cloud or you can't use Windows. In spite of claims often made on this site that nobody understands or cares about privacy, people do care and understand when it's something this obvious and this extreme.
    • Thorrez 2y ago
      Does Recall work locally? If so, why would it send data to the cloud?
      • renegade-otter 2y ago
        Because the whole point is to collect massive amounts of data to "train" their AI. AI is the new Big Data, but instead of just wanting your basic information, where you moved your mouse, and how long you stayed on a page, they want all of it.
        • visarga 2y ago
          I doubt that. If you want a data hoover, look no further than chatGPT. People bring their data on a platter to it, private documents, drafts, personal problems, how to deal with government bureaucracy, anything actually. A diversity of people, they have more than 180M users, and if you assume a measly 10K tokens/user/month, that makes for 2 trillion tokens. And they are already language based, an alternation of AI text and human responses. What can AI learn from human responses? They carry implicit feedback - did the user take the last response and build on it, or request a clarification, or pushed back? Did he try the idea and it didn't work? All that feedback served by the human helps the AI just as much as the AI helps the human. chatGPT is a data blackhole. Every fine-tune can include new human preference data and new knowledge. Imagine the security implications if they fine-tune daily, learn a skill today, use it to assist someone else tomorrow. Maybe your nice idea will be implemented by someone else first!
• upbeatlinux 2y ago
  A total recall
• chancemehmu 2y ago
  [flagged]
• ofslidingfeet 2y ago
  Maybe the powers that be will have to come to terms with how they have *completely fucking obliterated all public trust in any large institution*.
• wruza 2y ago
  Recall uses local AI models built into Windows 11 to screenshot mostly everything you see or do on your computer and then give you the ability to search and retrieve items you’ve seen. An explorable timeline lets you scroll through these snapshots to look back on what you did on a particular day on your PC. Everything in Recall is designed to remain local and private on-device, so no data is used to train Microsoft’s AI models. https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24178144/microsoft-windows-ai-recall-feature-delay https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24178144/microsoft-window... Had to look it up, sharing to save someone a minute.
  • beretguy 2y ago
    > Everything in Recall is designed to remain local and private on-device, so no data is used to train Microsoft’s AI models. Not yet.
  • tmpz22 2y ago
    Newer Apple Intelligence features will require 16gb ram and new M-series chips to run on-device. How is Microsoft able to release wide-spread features on device when there is a much diverse ecosystem of lower-powered, low-cost, windows devices??
    • wilsonnb3 2y ago
      This feature is exclusive to PCs designated as CoPilot+, which requires 16 gigs of ram and a NPU of a certain speed.
    • Sir_Twist 2y ago
      Apple Intelligence works 8 gigs because of the phone's ram limit, no?
• chx 2y ago
  > Recall snapshots will only be decrypted and accessible when the user authenticates. Question is, do you need to auth every time you try to access past snapshots? If not then this is still the mother lode for any infostealer. And I do not think the danger Recall poses in an abusive relationship especially to women is adequately answered by "You can disable saving snapshots, pause them temporarily, filter applications and websites from being in snapshots, and delete your snapshots at any time" -- you'd need to know this thing exists and figure out how to pause. And I wonder whether the pause itself would leave a trace...
• hehdhdjehehegwv 2y ago
  This is why you need proactive privacy evaluations before you ship. The standard of the past 25 years of “let’s violate every privacy law and know it won’t catch up with us” is over. You either ship privacy complaint product, which means painful and slow review and adjustment which is an obvious financial cost…OR you go to market out of compliance, get slammed by the press and regulators, and the entire project eats shit. What seems like short-term cost saving is really just torching the entire investment. The underlying reason Boeing planes fall out of the sky and these privacy hostile products fail is the same: speed and greed.
• chucke1992 2y ago
  Erm...But that's not what is written in the article though?
• finkin1 2y ago
  I wonder if MKBHD's podcast discussing the feature is the cause of the backlash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg8uJXSRhKo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg8uJXSRhKo. I think they do a fairly good job talking about the pros/cons of the feature. It definitely seems insane that raw screenshots would just be accessible on the device.
  • alt227 2y ago
    No, I saw this video come out after the backlash. I assumed MKBHD was jumping on the hype.
• hnpolicestate 2y ago
  You know what would be catastrophically bad? A Recall AI feature being baked into Android. Like most people don't actually use personal computers anymore, even laptops aren't common among demos younger than millennials. I can tolerate switching to Linux or buying a steam deck. But if this became a hard coded feature of android or iOS I'd have to give up smartphones entirely.
  • Gormo 2y ago
    I'm sure Lineage, Graphene et al would immediately remove it. Something like that would likely also motivate a surge of interest in pure Linux phones, like the Librem or PinePhone, which would accelerate their development, and might be a net positive.
    • okanat 2y ago
      Graphene maybe but it has a very limited set of devices it works on. Lineage may not be actually. They rarely go against what Google does. Developing any normal user facing OS with lots of bells and whistles so it has a useful and modern closed-source friendly app ecosystem is insanely hard. It is the huge software stack that Google put in Android that makes it nicer for many app developers to make apps for it. Those basically un-Linux the Linux parts of it to provide stable interfaces. I don't think this will change in the open source world in the next 3 decades and with increasing hardware complexity I expect even less success from independent Linux phone projects. If such a project wants to be successful it has to do many things against the usual Linux. I don't see that happening without any corporate support.
  • gigel82 2y ago
    That's basically what Apple announced with the their semantic AI integrations; they didn't call them screenshots because they're smarter than Microsoft but it's the same thing (actually, slightly worse, since their "AI" is not only local, but can reach out to the "private cloud" under unspecified conditions).
  • hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    > Like most people don't actually use personal computers anymore, even laptops aren't common among demos younger than millennials. Is that actually true? I'd imagine people actually creating things on their computer would at least need the equivalent of a Chromebook, which I would consider a laptop.
• ngrilly 2y ago
  That’s a product recall.
• gnicholas 2y ago
  I can see why they would want to hold onto this feature, since it would make their devices incredibly sticky. If you spent a year or two having an AI understand literally everything that happens on your screen, then you'd be hard-pressed to switch to a different platform that lacks that historical understanding. Assuming there's no way to port the data, this would all but guarantee that you're a customer for life. It's possible Apple could have pulled this off. But MS has shown itself time and time again to be user-hostile and privacy-agnostic.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• MP_1729 2y ago
  Satya Nadella's Microsoft is such a weird company. It's like there's one side of it that is running with Zuckerberg's "move fast and break things" and the other side is saying "wait, we're the most important software company in the world! Things can't break!"
  • wvenable 2y ago
    This is a pretty insightful comment. That's exactly how it feels. The core of their technologies have never been more solid, including Windows. But then on top of that solid core is a bunch of "move fast and break things" and short-term profit choices that make the whole thing seem awful.
    • hypeatei 2y ago
      Don't forget the ones that can't get a simple chat app to work right (Microsoft Teams) or the ones redesigning outlook which introduced a shit ton of bugs. It's amazing that humans as a collective have decided that private corporations are the best way to progress as a civilization.
  • wikidickynuts 2y ago
    2 cultures? Doesn't sound too surprising to me... one that is feature oriented and another that is old guard trying to support legacy customers.
  • cedws 2y ago
    Microsoft don't want to miss out on another big industry so they're compensating by trying to frontrun everyone whilst trying not to fall over.
  • rchaud 2y ago
    Even before Nadella, MS took insane risks with Windows. Ballmer oversaw the disastrous Windows 8 wigh the fullscreen Start Menu, which was hated far more than Vista ever was. W8 didn't even last 3 years before being replaced by Win10. And that's to say nothing of the decade-long attempt to compete with Google and Apple in mobile with Windows Phone/RT/Nokia, which Nadella mercifully unwound.
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
  What is interesting is the contrast to Apple’s AI announcements. Apple’s announcements were accompanied by an acknowledgment of the risk of privacy and a thorough analysis of the threat model and detailed design and specific steps taken to mitigate them. You can tell people with deep expertise spent time looking at the problem and coming up with solutions. Microsoft Recall on the hand had the feeling of - Oh my, this has privacy implications, we never would have guessed??? That approach my Microsoft erodes trust. Apples’s approach builds trust.
• methuselah_in 2y ago
  Well I guess got scared because people will install Linux?
  • cybwraith 2y ago
    Windows 11's disaster of changes had already pushed me to decide to go full linux on my PCs, this was the straw that got me to stop being lazy and actually execute on that decision.
• nashashmi 2y ago
  Guess the sh!t they thought they could force down everyone's throat (like the Windows 11 bar) has a recoil effect.
• appstorelottery 2y ago
  I'm impressed that Microsoft seems to be listening to the tech community - now if only they would address telemetry I'm back in!
  • phyrex 2y ago
    I work on dev tools at my company. Telemetry really helps a ton to figure out if you're prioritizing the right things and if changes that you made are really for the better
    • Ylpertnodi 2y ago
      Opt-in, or opt-out?
      • phyrex 2y ago
        For the company there’s no opt-anything, its internal tools, of course we need metrics, and presumably you have nothing to hide with your work :) I’ve become a lot more tolerant of telemetry since starting to work there, because I see the use. If you really care about privacy (as a company/provider), you can anonymize and aggregate the data and still get nearly all the benefits, but I can totally understand why people put telemetry into their product, including opt-out only
• nofunsir 2y ago
  There was a post on HN not too long ago about a random 3rd party/open source tool that does exactly this, no? When I first heard about Recall AI, I immediately thought back to that HN article, but can't find it.
  • janjones 2y ago
    What an irony. If you had Recall or that tool you mention installed, you could probably find it easily :D
    • nofunsir 2y ago
      Ugg... that just made me think of the opposite case where you're looking for something and it feigns ignorance...[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD9YqdWwwdw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD9YqdWwwdw
  • alt227 2y ago
    You mean rewind.ai
    • nofunsir 2y ago
      Yes! Thank you. Here's the thread I was thinking of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33421751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33421751
• frithsun 2y ago
  What's interesting to me is that AI hype accidentally got non technical people thinking and talking more about their privacy and security concerns relating to software. There's nothing sinister about LLMs relative to the kind of data collection big tech has been up to for years and years. It's just that all the AGI spin has triggered a defensive response in people. Positive, in my opinion. People should be approaching tech privacy concerns with fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
  • hbn 2y ago
    There did not previously exist screenshots of everything my monitor displays any time I'm using my computer, and I don't want that data to exist. Sure, a lot of my activity could be pieced together from various other things that track my activity, but constant screenshots of everything that was on my monitor is a centralized goldmine of data that I don't want anyone to have access to. I'd say that is more sinister than most other data collection.
• WhackyIdeas 2y ago
  As I said nearly three weeks ago on HN: “Even if they say that they’ll be abandoning this idea as they have ‘listened to user feedback’ or some other bull, the complete damage has already been done here. Thank the lord there are an abundance of excellent OS alternatives.” Get them to fuck. Sorry, for the language.
• eigenvalue 2y ago
  Unless I'm understanding this wrong, 99% of computers out there wouldn't even be able to run this anyway, since it requires a special neural processing chip that supports 40 trillion operations per second (and this can't be the GPU). So basically only Microsoft's own brand new Surface models could even use it in the first place.
  • knallfrosch 2y ago
    Acer Asus Dell HP Lenovo Samsung https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/05/20/introducing-copilot-pcs/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/05/20/introducing-copi...
• jjcm 2y ago
  Recall suffered from a classic Microsoft mistake they've made time and again, but never learned from - how to correctly market and package your feature. Microsoft always tends to "go big" with their integrations, often to their detriment, in order to increase adoption of new features. One notable time was with Windows 8. They really, REALLY wanted people to try out the new Metro UI, so they deeply integrated it into the OS, pushed it in every marketing campaign, and made it the first screen you saw on login. There were some great features in it - better performance and better search results, but it wasn't opt in. The reaction from customers who took a casual look was, "they removed the desktop!". It wasn't true, but because of how overzealous MS was to push the new feature, that became the takeaway. The same thing is happening here - Microsoft pushed what objectively is a great tool, but they did so in a way that never gave users a choice of whether or not they wanted it. They've also framed the messaging and marketing in a way that's confusing to what is actually happening. Look at the amount of talk in this blogpost dedicated to mentioning how important security is for them, without ever actually going into what the security issues are or how they're addressing them. Sloppy marketing + forced integration has bit Microsoft so many times now. I'm always shocked that they never learn from this.
  • plopilop 2y ago
    How is this objectively a great feature? This is a spyware that stores screenshots unencrypted (and thus accessible to any other spyware). I am also not convinced that the AI tools would have been offline, thus effectively sharing your whole data with Microsoft (even more than before). From a privacy perspective, this feature is an abomination
    • NegativeK 2y ago
      "Objectively" is very strong, but I'd love a tool like this. Except it's so thoroughly invasive and ripe for abuse that I can't imagine ever using something like this that isn't open source and thoroughly vetted. And I think your very valid points are stemming from that -- MS's implementation was hamfisted and halfassed, and people don't trust them even if they do it correctly. But those are issues with the implementation and the implementer, in my mind. Not the conceptual feature.
• jrflowers 2y ago
  I love all of the “I see how this could be useful software. I’d maybe use it!” comments. Since this functionality can pretty much be replicated with OBS Studio + a keylogger I would love to know what keylogger/screen recorder software combo everybody is already running on their own machines
  • alt227 2y ago
    The data capture could, but the part where you ask AI a humanised query and it will search your data for you couldnt.
    • jrflowers 2y ago
      Surely you could just pipe the output of your keylogger to chatgpt or a local llama instance. Voila!
• havkom 2y ago
  Did they recall the recall product?
• Sparkyte 2y ago
  AI needs more pot on the kettle to be useful. Everyone is trying to AI into some money making machine which it is to an extent. Just the same problem we experienced with the cryptocraze.
• midtake 2y ago
  I don't think Microsoft understands security. They use phrases like "secure by default" as if Recall is anything but, and it looks like "just-in-time" security requires Windows Hello, which I also don't want. I'm sorry but what little faith I had in Windows has absolutely dried up. If I didn't use Windows for video games with an Nvidia card, I would have no personal use for Windows. MacOS and Linux have been amazing lately and it seems like a downgrade every time I switch to my windows PC.
• SpaceManNabs 2y ago
  wonder how they managed to add all these security features so quickly to a product that they didn't think had security issues in the first place... If you are vague enough, you can say you did something. If you don't explicitly mention the issue(s), you don't have to mention what you changed, if anything. Classic M$.
• cedws 2y ago
  If Apple did something like Recall, they'd run the whole thing on a separate secure chip somehow and encrypt the data with a (actual secure) enclave. Microsoft are doing this the quick, dirty, lazy way by just embedding it into the OS. Lack of vertical integration is also haunting them.
  • skydhash 2y ago
    Apple is already building the same set of features. But because everything is so centralized (Apple’s frameworks and dev tooling are good) they can do stuff without recording your activities. Especially with so many people using the default apps, and the integration with Siri that already exists.
  • gigel82 2y ago
    Of course, everything will be encrypted, then securely transmitted over to their servers and promptly decrypted when requested by the authorities (see Apple in China and CCP's key to iCloud).
• catoc 2y ago
  Microsoft Recalled
• dang 2y ago
  Related. Others? Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40677424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40677424 - June 2024 (54 comments) Microsoft will switch off Recall by default after security backlash - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40610435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40610435 - June 2024 (523 comments) Microsoft Research chief scientist has no issue with Recall - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40594608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40594608 - June 2024 (87 comments) Microsoft Recall should make you consider Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40591141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40591141 - June 2024 (141 comments) Microsoft has gone radio silent on Windows Recall - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40584190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40584190 - June 2024 (45 comments) Windows Recall demands an extraordinary level of trust Microsoft hasn't earned - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40577197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40577197 - June 2024 (35 comments) Security researcher discovers Microsoft's Recall tool is woefully insecure - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40573097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40573097 - June 2024 (68 comments) Windows AI feature that screenshots everything labeled a security 'disaster' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40570294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40570294 - June 2024 (42 comments) How the new Microsoft Recall feature fundamentally undermines Windows security - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40433884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40433884 - May 2024 (47 comments) Microsoft's AI chatbot will 'recall' everything you do on its new PCs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40425306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40425306 - May 2024 (167 comments) Recall is Microsoft's key to unlocking the future of PCs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40417837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40417837 - May 2024 (58 comments)
• porcoda 2y ago
  I’m not sure Microsoft will ever achieve the level of trust they’d need to make things like this feature ever be acceptable. I’m sure in parts of the company they care about user trust quite a bit, but those people will never be able to counter the actions that the “maximize revenue at all costs” people take that undermine trust left and right. I don’t see them putting “build and maintain user trust” as a corporate goal that they ACTUALLY try to achieve (not just use as a corporate feel good statement), since “maximize shareholder value and revenue” will always win.
• SimianSci 2y ago
  For those who have not been keeping up with recent events. The United States government, is currently reevaluating its relationship with Microsoft due to recent security issues related to Russian and Chinese state-funded attacks. [Microsoft Storm-0558 Incident, cited as a recent example] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2023/07/14/analysis-of-storm-0558-techniques-for-unauthorized-email-access/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2023/07/14/ana... Microsoft recently pledged to improve its security practices through incentives to executive pay and other initiatives. [Microsoft Blog on recent Commitment] https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2024/06/13/microsofts-work-to-strengthen-cybersecurity-protection/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2024/06/13/microso... Despite these pledges, several members of Congress are making it known that they dont see Microsoft as being serious about their recent commitments around security. It is worth noting that several of these members of congress influence how much Microsoft gets paid. The Recall feature is often used as a lightning rod to bring to light the rushed rollout of Microsoft's features without concern for security. [Video with timestamp of Microsoft's President being questioned by Florida Congresswoman, Recall mentioned] https://youtu.be/kB2GCmasH4c?t=8217 https://youtu.be/kB2GCmasH4c?t=8217 While I suspect there may not be any sole reason for the release delay, it would seem to me that having Microsoft's biggest customer using Recall this way, may greatly influence the company's decision to hold off on the release.
  • akira2501 2y ago
    > improve its security practices through incentives to executive pay Oh! It was lax executive pay that led to the problems.
• lemonlime0x3C33 2y ago
  I have been dual booting for years but this has been my motivation to officially abandon windows at home, just need to figure out how to play civ 7 when it comes out next year...
• capl 2y ago
  Please delay it indefinitely. The OS with the worst security combined with a queryable LLM recording everything you do? Yeah, no.
• gerash 2y ago
  The feature is great. It's not new idea. We were thinking of something like this 10 years ago on Android phones but the compute and battery life wasn't and still isn't there. So I will use it if it's executed right. However I mainly use Linux and Mac these days.
• globalnode 2y ago
  this is going to be costly for me as i will now need 2 pc's one running linux for personal use, programming, w/e, and one running windoze just for games
• airstrike 2y ago
  We here for you
• sagebird 2y ago
  Nevermind the security and ethical issues. The implementation will be a slog, annoying, and distract from something that Microsoft ought to care about: creating a delightful, snappy experience. Why isn’t recall a piece of software instead of an operating system integration? Can apps spawn apps? Like, if you want chrome session recalled- open recall, then open chrome from there? Why does every new feature need to enshitificate the operating system? Isn’t that an indication that the operating system doesn’t give app developers enough expressive power to create tools that they must go up the hierarchy and reach for OS modification?
• cancerhacker 2y ago
  22 years ago, Microsoft was pushing “.net my services”, also known as Hailstorm - but after announcement and initial push it was suspended[1]. But looking back at it - many of the services they were describing have been reemerging (if not just copied). I’m sure there will be parts of Recall AI that will survive, just maybe not with Microsoft driving. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/11/business/technology-microsoft-has-quietly-shelved-its-internet-persona-service.html?unlocked_article_code=1.z00.qmqb.NuGeta1lqdge&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/11/business/technology-micro...
• nnurmanov 2y ago
  This kind of delays always amuse me. Did they conduct user research after they come up with the idea? I highly doubt that all 100% were happy about it.
• iscrewyou 2y ago
  I keep seeing this headline and they keep misspelling privacy.
• mihaaly 2y ago
  Delay?! Will recording and storing all your activity ever be secure? Suddenly in the future it will flip and become secure or what do they expect from the delay? Ah, yes, I see, they want to delay until people are not concerned anymore. Cooking them slowly in increasingly worse privacy violations than throwing them into a hot one at once. Works with frogs. And users of modern gadgets. Instead of waiting they'd better making it a product that those have no concern can download now, and perhaps even paid for in exchange for the mass of data they provide. It could even be a separate operating system lets say Windows 1984 that users are paid for using it. With webcam on all the time and no stars in password fields. Alternatively it could be called Windwos Beijing and have mass orders from the folks there.
• mrandish 2y ago
  Once they do deploy it, I'll immediately disable it. And not even (primarily) because it's invasive and intrusive but because it'll be mostly useless to me AND it'll further clog my still-occasionally-laggy 4B cycle/sec PC with more unnecessary background tasks while sucking battery life and storage space for little benefit. I resent that they continue to invest significant resources in buzzy new features like this (which no user asked for) to drive conceptual agendas decreed by MSFT leadership while continuing to ignore fixing the core Windows feature in this area: Search. The Windows built-in search function has always been so slow and limited it's nearly useless. It's so bad MSFT should be embarrassed. Meanwhile, the free Everything add-on shows exactly how it should be done - delivering global file search that's blisteringly fast, flexible and deeply capable. And it's written by one guy in his spare time (https://www.voidtools.com/ https://www.voidtools.com/). Note: I assume above that MSFT will be forced to offer a way for enterprise IT departments to disable this via Policy Manager (because NSA and others with sensitive intel or IP will balk without a way to disable it).
• smmseller 2y ago
  [dead]
• downrightmike 2y ago
  Shame, legal discovery would have been an easy grift: $250\hr lawyer to review 8 hours per day = $2k Times 90 days history = 180,000 (PER USER PER MACHINE)
• tylerchilds 2y ago
  i was recently filming on a reality show and i used recall as an example of why my system is important. i’ve been building an end to end encrypted system, to secure cross platform interactive collaboration and that broke the threat model. i can only guarantee security insofar as the host operating system doesn’t bypass my security by taking pictures of your screen every three seconds. i hate that i’m going to need to lean into that, but for the first time in my approaching twenty years in technology, non technical folks are understanding cybersecurity better because it’s so clearly against their day to day lives, expectations, and interests.