Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at an event on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, on May 20, 2024.
Jonah Kassinger | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft It said that after security researchers determine that attackers have access to underlying data, artificial intelligence features that take screenshots and search for user activity will be turned off by default on new computers.
The Recall function is one of the main features Microsoft demonstrated at a press conference last month, and it is about to launch Copilot+ PC with artificial intelligence computing capabilities.
“If you don’t actively choose to turn it on, it will be turned off by default,” Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s head of Windows and Surface devices, wrote in a report. blog post Friday.
Microsoft has recently been trying to balance competing interests and integrate new generative artificial intelligence tools into its products to keep up with the competition. While the market is developing rapidly, user privacy and security are also receiving close attention. The U.S. Government Review Board recently criticized Microsoft for its handling of China’s breach of the email accounts of U.S. government officials.
Microsoft has brought the Copilot conversational chatbot to Windows in a manner similar to OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT. Both ChatGPT and Copilot rely on servers in the cloud to perform the necessary calculations and then transmit the responses back to the PC. Recall is different in that it saves the data on the user’s computer and does not require additional computing power via network access.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has instructed employees to put security first and announced changes to its security practices in the wake of the U.S. government report.
After Microsoft launched Recall, which can search logs of previous operations on a PC, industry experts began to question the possibility of hackers retrieving user information.
Security practitioners released a document called total recall Displays the data collected by Recall.
“Windows Recall stores everything locally in an unencrypted SQLite repository, and screenshots are simply saved in a folder on your PC,” they wrote in a description of Total Recall on GitHub. They added that attackers could find The Recall tool expressed concern about the username and password included in the screenshots.
In addition to requiring people to manually turn on Recall when Copilot+ PC launches on June 18, Microsoft has also added security protections to Recall.
“Windows Hello needs to be registered to enable Recall,” Davuluri wrote. “Additionally, proof of existence is required to view your timeline and search in Recall.”
With Windows Hello, users can prove their identity by entering a PIN, showing their face to the PC camera, or providing their fingerprint.
Kevin Beaumont, a former Microsoft cybersecurity analyst who criticized the initial implementation of Recall, said in a statement on Friday: “I think overall, choosing to use home systems will prevent a lot of people from avoiding it. Further security concerns. postal on X.