Windows 11 Recall Feature Can Be Run on Unsupported PCs Without an NPU

Microsoft recently announced theRecall AI featurewith a lot of pomp during the launch ofCopilot+ PCs. In case you are unaware, it’s an AI feature that takes screenshots of your screen every few seconds to create an on-device memory and a dedicated NPU powers it. You can perform semantic searches and find your activities from the past using natural language prompts.

Microsoft said that to run Recall, you need tobuy the next-gen Copilot+ PCthat comes with the Snapdragon X series chipsets. However, Albacore, a Windows developer, has managed to run Recall on PCs without a dedicated NPU. Recall performs OCR, object detection, and other actions using small AI models on the device.Looking to try the new Recall feature coming to Windows 11? Now you can! ✨I got the opportunity to write about the journey of getting Recall to work on unsupported hardware for@tomshardware. You can check it out here 😊https://t.co/clpHrXzyMT— Albacore ☁️ (@thebookisclosed)May 31, 2024

Looking to try the new Recall feature coming to Windows 11? Now you can! ✨I got the opportunity to write about the journey of getting Recall to work on unsupported hardware for@tomshardware. You can check it out here 😊https://t.co/clpHrXzyMT— Albacore ☁️ (@thebookisclosed)May 31, 2024

For this task, an NPU offers multi-fold parallelized performance with great efficiency, running in the background. However, when there is no NPU, the AI operations are delegated to the CPU and GPU, which may offer slower performance and consume more battery.

For now, Albacore says that you can run Recall on ARM64 PCs with decent performance. You can’t natively run Recall on Intel and AMD PCs yet as Microsoft has not packaged the ML models for x86 PCs yet. In case, you want to run Recall on your x86 PC, the developer has mentioned that you canemulate the ARM64 buildon your existing PC.

However, in my testing, it’s glacially slow to install and the process is a bit complex. I couldn’t install the ARM64 build on my PC despite having decent specs. If you have one of the older ARM PCs, you can head over to theGitHub pageto find detailed instructions.

While the Recall feature may look promising, there are privacy and security implications that you must consider. Many users are not comfortable sharing screenshots, although the processing happens locally. Microsoft says the local database is encrypted using BitLocker.Microsoft told media outlets a hacker cannot exfiltrate Copilot+ Recall activity remotely.Reality: how do you think hackers will exfiltrate this plain text database of everything the user has ever viewed on their PC? Very easily, I have it automated.HT detectivepic.twitter.com/Njv2C9myxQ— Kevin Beaumont (@GossiTheDog)May 30, 2024

Microsoft told media outlets a hacker cannot exfiltrate Copilot+ Recall activity remotely.Reality: how do you think hackers will exfiltrate this plain text database of everything the user has ever viewed on their PC? Very easily, I have it automated.HT detectivepic.twitter.com/Njv2C9myxQ— Kevin Beaumont (@GossiTheDog)May 30, 2024

However, security researchers point out that the vector index is saved in a local SQLite database which can be accessed by malicious programs, running as admin. Since Microsoft doesn’t perform any kind of content moderation on Recall snapshots, all your passwords are shown in plain text. If malicious actors gain access to the local database, they can easily extract passwords and sensitive information.

What do you think about the Recall AI feature? Are you going to use it? Let us know in the comments below.

Arjun Sha

Passionate about Windows, ChromeOS, Android, security and privacy issues. Have a penchant to solve everyday computing problems.

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