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Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

reuters.com

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Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#41

Post by jononor »

Dalewyn wrote: post #16
davesmylie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 e…

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.

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.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#42

Post by Dalewyn »

jononor wrote: post #41
Dalewyn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

>slurp up passwords/tokens

So like the clipboard?

>anything in incognito browser window

None of that is private.

>And it may have stored images, not just text.

They're both data.

Once again: Is there any difference? I'm not seeing one. Pedantics aren't worth my time.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#43

Post by stby »

pjmlp wrote: post #36
visarga wrote: post #4

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.

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, a…

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.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#44

Post by pjmlp »

stby wrote: post #43
pjmlp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

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.

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.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#45

Post by kbf »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #40
oefrha wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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),…

>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.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#46

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

mjg59 wrote: post #27
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Under what circumstances would someone have access to the database but not the key?

Well, presumably under the circumstances where you'd prefer that.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#47

Post by ruuda »

slicktux wrote: post #21
ruuda wrote: post #19

> 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

Off topic??

Apologies, wrong tab, I meant to post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40677941

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#48

Post by rsynnott »

visarga wrote: post #4

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.

While I'm not a huge fan of Apple's thing, either, it isn't the same level of ridiculously over-aggressive data collection.

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#49

Post by postmodest »

ketzo wrote: post #12
visarga wrote: post #4

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.

Are we really comparing a userland, unencrypted-at-rest SQLite database with Apple's app sandbox + secure enclave?

Apple's competitors lose the PR war if they don't post to social media!

Re: Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns

#50

Post by visarga »

ankurdhama wrote: post #13
visarga wrote: post #4

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.

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.

> Two completely different approach.

Just semantics. In the end Apple has access to everything, like MS.

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