Windows 11’s controversial AI Recall feature delayed again

Microsoft originally intended to delay its controversial Recall feature until October. But on Halloween, Microsoft has confirmed that Recall will be postponed again to avoid becoming the privacy nightmare before Christmas.

Microsoft told The Verge that Recall has been delayed until December, when it will once again be released to the Windows Insider program. Brandon LeBlanc, one of the co-captains of sorts which heads up the Windows Insider program, told the publication that it needs more time to deliver a “secure and trusted experience.”

Microsoft representatives provided the statement in full to PCWorld.

“We are committed to delivering a secure and trusted experience with Recall,” LeBlanc, a senior product manager for Windows, said. “We recently shared updates to the security and privacy architecture for Recall in a Windows Blog post. To ensure we deliver on these important updates, we’re taking additional time to refine the experience before previewing it with Windows Insiders. Originally planned for October, Recall will now be available for preview with Windows Insiders on Copilot+ PCs by December.”

Microsoft is still committed to Recall, which came and went as the flagship experience on Copilot+ PCs, which debuted months ago with a variety of AI-powered experiences that run under Windows 11’s 2024 Update. After a delay, it was expected this month, in October.

Recall was designed to snap periodic snapshots of your desktop, seeing what you do, then “read” the information using AI and store it in a searchable database on your PC. Recall’s premise appealed to me, but many saw it as a potential privacy problem, especially when researchers said that the information was stored on your PC without encryption. In September, Microsoft announced a host of changes, from storing data more securely and making Recall an opt-in feature that could be uninstalled at a later time.

On a recent episode of PCWorld’s The Full Nerd podcast, a listener asked about the future of Recall. I said then that I thought that there’s a non-zero chance that Recall is scrapped and doesn’t make it to market. That looks less certain now, as Microsoft has recommitted to the feature, though it remains a possibility.