During a lecture at a university, a computer scientist from Microsoft takes on the fight against Windows Recall and tries to silence the criticism.

Since Microsoft announced the Recall feature for Windows 11 during Build, a lot has been said and written about it. Microsoft is responding for the first time to the numerous criticisms the feature is receiving. Jaime Teevan, a computer scientist on the software giant’s payroll, was invited as a guest speaker to a conference at Stanford University, where she was asked some questions about Recall.

Back in time

The feature literally takes you back in time. Recall uses AI to take screenshots of your PC screen at regular intervals and save them. In theory, nothing you do on your PC is lost.

We’re not the only ones who have reservations about security – security experts aren’t fans of Recall either. The feature saves everything you do on your computer, including the passwords you enter. This information is then stored on your computer.

Teevan defends Recall by saying that the data collected by the feature can be very valuable in the context of the “AI revolution.” “As individuals, we also have important data that we interact with all the time. There’s an opportunity to think about what that data means and how we can capture and use it. This AI revolution we’re in right now is really changing the way we understand data.”

That’s all well and good, but what does Recall do with the data? Reevan confirms that the data stays entirely local to your PC and doesn’t go to the cloud. However, local security isn’t 100% watertight, as cybersecurity experts have already shown, but Reevan wasn’t asked about that.

Despite the criticism, Microsoft does not seem to be deviating from Recall. The feature will be introduced from June 18th, but only on PCs that Microsoft recognizes as “AI PCs.” If you have a “normal” PC, you will miss out on Recall, although that may not be such a big loss.