Microsoft Rolls Out Controversial Recall Feature To High-End Windows PCs

Microsoft is rolling out its controversial Recall feature to high-end Windows PCs, betting a record of what users do on their computers will be seen as more of a benefit than a privacy risk.

The feature, which takes searchable snapshots of a PC screen every few seconds and has added safeguards, will be available to users of Microsoft’s AI-branded PCs starting on Friday, the company said in a blog post. Microsoft also announced beefed-up search and a tool that lets users quickly summon artificially intelligent assistants to help edit text or photos.

The software company announced Recall last year to show off the capabilities of Copilot+ PCs, computers with an additional processor that handles AI tasks, and pitched it as a cure to information overload.

The rollout sparked a backlash from security researchers, who said Microsoft failed to properly protect the data — including credit card and Social Security numbers — it was harvesting. They warned that Recall provided an easy and obvious target for hackers.

Engineers went back to the drawing board to improve Recall’s security safeguards, requiring biometric user sign-in and disabling the product by default. A planned wide release was scrapped and Recall was given to a subset of Windows users who test coming updates.

Users of Copilot+ PCs, which Microsoft said accounted for about 15% of the high-end computers sold in the US during the holiday quarter, will also get other new features. An updated Windows search will let people describe what they’re looking for rather than searching by file names, while Click to Do will summarize a block of text or start a search based on a selected image.