United Kingdom

Microsoft's new AI tools are drawing concern from the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), with the recently announced "Recall" feature of Copilot+ PCs being named a potential security risk. The ICO joins industry veterans and privacy campaigners in investigating the safety of Recall, a snapshot-collection feature turned "privacy nightmare".

"We are making enquiries with Microsoft to understand the safeguards in place to protect user privacy," said an ICO spokesperson. The ICO, the UK's office over data protection and user privacy, says that firms like Microsoft "must rigorously assess and mitigate risks to peoples' rights and freedoms" before offering new products or services. Dr. Kris Shrishak, adviser on privacy at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, went a step further, saying that "[Recall] could be a privacy nightmare. The mere fact that screenshots will be taken during use of the device could have a chilling effect on people."

As we previously reported, Recall could potentially pose some serious privacy risks even if it works as advertised. The new feature is a part of Microsoft's new Copilot+ PC family of laptops, Arm-based Windows machines tuned for AI performance, and a suite of AI upgrades to leverage their new NPU power. Recall remembers what you've seen on your computer for you, taking screenshots every few seconds to curate a full log of your activity in case you forget where you've seen something. The AI comes in as you search your history, for example bringing up all images with "red shoes" in them when you search for "red shoes".