Elon Musk Links Microsoft's New Recall Feature To A Black Mirror Episode

Microsoft is releasing Recall for Copilot Plus PCs, an upcoming Windows 11 tool that records every detail you see and perform on your computer. It also allows you to search and retrieve your entire history from the device. A video of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussing this powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tool has gone viral. But billionaire Elon Musk has managed to get concerned about the “feature”. The Tesla CEO has referred to it as “a Black Mirror episode”.

In the video, Nadella talks about a feature called Recall that acts as a photographic memory, continuously recording screenshots to remember and comprehend everything you do on your computer. “It’s not a keyword search, it’s a semantic search over all your history. And it’s not just about any document. We can recreate moments from the past essentially,” Nadella stated.

However, Musk declared in his post, “This is a Black Mirror episode. Definitely turning this “feature” off.”

It alludes to the Netflix series Black Mirror, in which a number of characters struggle with how modern technology affects their personal lives and habits.

Musk’s retweet has more than 17 million views. The comments section was also in favour of the Tesla CEO’s remarks.

A user said, “The Hunger Games & Black Mirror episodes are turning into reality.”

Another user humorously noted, “Did the CIA come up with this?”

“This is a huge invasion of privacy,” wrote a user.

Recall’s capabilities are quite broad — it can log activities within applications, monitor conversations during live meetings, retain track of every website you have visited for research and much more. Recall is known internally at Microsoft as AI Explorer. All you have to do is initiate a Recall action, which functions similarly to an AI-powered search and it will provide you with a context-rich picture of that time frame.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described the new feature in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. He stated that it uses the individual’s personal semantic index and the laptop’s small language model to do operations on-device. A comparable feature named Timeline was offered by Microsoft in Windows 10, however, it was dropped in 2021.

Similar functionality may also be found in the Rewind program for Mac. But Recall is seamlessly incorporated into Windows 11 right out of the box.