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Copilot Vision is an extension of Microsoft’s divisive Recall, a feature initially sort of exclusive to the Copilot+ systems with a neural co-processor of sufficient computational power. Like Recall, which was pulled due to serious security failings and subject to a lengthy delay before its eventual relaunch, Copilot Vision is designed to analyze everything you do on your computer.
It does this, when enabled, by capturing constant screenshots and feeding them to an optical character recognition system and a large language model for analysis – but where Recall works locally, Copilot Vision sends the data off to Microsoft servers.
According to a Microsoft spokesperson back in April, users’ data will not be stored long-term, aside from transcripts of the conversation with the Copilot assistant itself, and “are not used for model training or ads personalisation.”
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While the screen snooping only happens when the user expressly activates it as part of a Copilot session, unlike Recall, which is constantly active in the background when enabled, it’s also designed to be more proactive than previous releases – which, for many readers, will conjure memories of Clippy and his cohort of animated assistants from the days of Microsoft Office 97 and onward.
At the time of writing, Microsoft was only offering Copilot Vision in the US, with the promise (or threat) that it will be coming to very specifically “non-European countries” soon – a tip of the hat, it seems, to the European Union’s AI Act.
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Source: Copilot Vision on Windows 11 sends data to Microsoft servers • The Register
Robin Edgar
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