Microsoft recalls Recall: Controversial AI feature won't be in Copilot+ Windows build at launch

A built-in Windows feature that takes screen shots of all your activities and then allows you to query them for information at any time: what could possibly go wrong?  Apparently enough that Microsoft has changed course and just announced that its upcoming Recall feature will not be part of the Windows 11 Build that comes on the first group of Copilot+ PCs that ship on Tuesday, June 18th.

"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," Microsoft wrote in a blog post this evening. "Following receiving feedback on Recall from our Windows Insider Community, as we typically do, we plan to make Recall (preview) available for all Copilot+ PCs coming soon."

This wording makes it sound like even Windows Insiders will not gain access to Recall on June 18th, but will have to wait. However, there are ways to try Windows Recall in a preview build today.

Ever since Microsoft announced Recall at its May 20th Copilot+ event, the new AI feature has been mired in controversy and it's easy to see why. Just a couple of days after the announcement and before users had even tried it, the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) launched an investigation. 

After researchers such as our own guest columnist Albacore figured out how to enable Recall on earlier-gen Snapdragon hardware, some discovered major security flaws, beyond the obvious. Researcher Kevin Beaumont wrote a blog post detailing issues, including the fact that all the data was stored in SQLite database that different users -- not just the one who created it -- could access either locally or remotely via malware.

Then, on June 8th, Microsoft backtracked and said that it would make Recall an opt-in feature (before it was on for everyone), that it would require a Windows Hello login to use it and that it would encrypt the Recall database and all snapshots, using "just in time" decryption.

Now, it appears that Recall won't be available to anyone in any way (apart from folks who have managed to hack an old preview build) on June 18th. That's the big coming out party for Copilot+ PCs with at least half a dozen laptops powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X series due to ship that day.

Microsoft is trying hard to sell the public on Copilot+ PCs, touting four exclusive Windows features that you won't be able to get on other Windows 11 computers, at least for a few more months. The four features are Cocreator (a text-to-image generator built into Windows Paint), Windows Studio Effects (special effects for your webcam), Live Captions with Real-Time Translation and Recall. 

The first three of these new features are readily available elsewhere. There are a ton of local and cloud-based AI image generators. There are dozens of ways to get background blurring and other special effects into your webcam output. And plenty of services do real-time captioning and translation. Windows 11 already does real-time captioning of audio without translation.

So the only standout feature, whether you think it's a good idea or not, is Recall. And now Recall won't even be available at launch. By the time it's finally ready for primetime, the other non-Snapdragon Copilot+ PCs may be out. And, given the negative publicity, the amount of people who actually chose to enable Recall may be minimal.