Microsoftlast week announced in collaboration with Qualcomm the “new” technology Copilot+highlighting the function Reminder. The function called “Recall”, in a simplified way, takes screenshots in the background of everything we do. Theoretically, “Recall” only worked with new NPU cores of the Snapdragon X Elitebut we now know thanks to a developer that this is not true.
Reminder is a new feature in Windows 11 that takes screenshots of what appears on the screen in the background. For this Copilot+ feature to work, the processor requires compatible NPU cores.
According to Microsoft, screenshots are stored locally and encrypted. This feature does not send screenshots from Microsoft or third-party companies and it appears that it can work without an Internet connection.
Copilot does not require NPU cores to work
For Copilot to work on Windows 11, it is insisted that the processor must have NPU cores. These, to obtain the best possible performance, must have a capacity of 45 TOPS. However, thanks to developer @thebookisclosed, we know that’s not necessarily the case.
According to this developer, he managed to get Windows 11’s “Reminder” option to work without needing a Snapdragon X Elite processor. It says it successfully enabled this feature on existing Arm64 hardware, but without detailing the processor.
Theoretically the same capacity would be applied to AMD and Intel processors, come on we could use it in those processors. OEMs have only received the Arm64 version of this training model and it has not yet been verified.
Microsoft requires that certain tasks, notably those related to Copilot, be assigned to NPUs. Additionally, he made it clear that Copilot+ is limited to the latest hardware solutions. Come on, we need a next generation processor to exploit its capabilities.
But it actually looks like Recall can run without these next-gen NPU cores. Apparently it is also not related to the Snapdragon X Elite, although during the presentation it was clarified that this was the case. Another thing is that we recommend you to use this feature.
Serious risk to recall safety
As we mentioned, Recall works in the background and takes screenshots of what’s happening in the foreground. What Microsoft didn’t explain in its presentation is that the feature doesn’t moderate content. What does that mean?
If during the capture process we write a password, our username or any other sensitive data, this information will not be obfuscated. Come on, all this information will be exposed in the capture, which is really dangerous no matter how much Microsoft says that the captures are encrypted and are not monitored by them or third parties. Of course, the Recall feature has the ability to not capture digital rights reserved (DRM) content.
The good part is that Recall can be completely disabled, which we highly recommend considering the security issues it can cause. It should be noted that this is the best example of wanting to force the integration of technologies that are still green or poorly configured or adjusted.
