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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

#451

Post by tedivm »

simonw wrote: post #97
tedivm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

> 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-s...

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

#452

Post by neltnerb »

JW_00000 wrote: post #425
pydry wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-analy...

As far as I can tell, this does not allow the employer to see whether employees were idle or not. It does allow tracking of how much time they spent in meetings and how many chat messages they sent.

Why are you focused on idle time? You don't think a LLM can try to answer other questions?

Do you think Microsoft will prevent their paying customers (the companies) from querying, "What is the strongest legal reason to fire based on the past three years of activity on this computer?"

Their sales team would be absolute fools not to point out how much easier it makes it for a manager to see historically whether someone is performing tasks as they are specified in some formal handbook.

The difference between doing that for reasonable reasons and doing that for post-hoc justification of targeted reprisals is in the mind of the manager and nowhere else. Maybe unspoken, but incredibly obvious.

"Give me the man and I will give you the case against him."

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

#453

Post by mrandish »

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/).

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).

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

#454

Post by sunaookami »

TillE wrote: post #358
MP_1729 wrote: post #136

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!"

One side is open-sourcing .NET and VS Code and running GitHub well and making vcpkg. The other is crapping up Windows with embarrassing ad-ridden F2P games. It's really weird.

>open-sourcing .NET and VS Code

They didn't open-source the debugger so that you have to use VS or VSC. VS Code also has shittons of telemtry (same for dotnet LCI) and when you use Codium you are (officially) not allowed to use their marketplace.

>running GitHub well

GitHub is down nearly every week and constantly has problems. I appreciate them making certain features free though.

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

#455

Post by simonw »

tedivm wrote: post #451
simonw wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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-s...

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-microsof...

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

#456

Post by ethbr1 »

JW_00000 wrote: post #424
ethbr1 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean Viva Insights? (formerly Workplace Analytics) https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-viva/insights

Does this allow seeing how long an an employee was idle, or just whether they were in meetings?

As of now, Microsoft seems to be boiling the frog slowly by marketing derived analytics. I believe they're less-than-specific on what goes into the mix.

E.g. "Employees that might be suffering burnout and need attention"

Which I can see for both PR optics and product reasons. If they retain the secret sauce and raw data, it makes it more difficult for others to go over-the-top and compete.

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

#458

Post by iLoveOncall »

rsynnott wrote: post #415
iLoveOncall wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. … Wait, how do you think they’d keep _that_ one secret?

By encrypting the data on your device with a key that only they have? It's extremely simple.

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

#459

Post by greenavocado »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #126
digging wrote: post #55

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 user…

You're assuming Microsoft acts as a singular, cohesive entity, which like any company it is not.

You're right. Carolina Hernandez speadheaded this initiative to take screenshots of your desktop every few seconds or minutes and transcribe the result into a regular local sqlite database.

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

#460

Post by dbish »

plopilop wrote: post #249
jjcm wrote: post #187

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…

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

Many users were paying for this from a 3rd party already (rewindAI)
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