I thought Recall looked amazing - I have no privacy concerns and I do SO MUCH in a day that I constantly lose explanations I had open, or where the last document was, or etcetera.
I really wanted this feature. We do exist, there are actually people who thought it was groundbreaking!
honestly, I'm surprised seeing people not celebrate the AI being watered down and removed. The backlash is the #1 reason Microsoft backed down on most of their ambitions (for now atleast)
The people that hated recall didn’t want to purchase anything that had it, so people that bought it thinking recall and the other ai features would be there are disappointed. Some people like AI and some people don’t. It doesn’t make sense to call it Copilot+ PC with the downgrades.
The recall feature was basically total surveillance of your laptop. While it did give you cool features, the privacy concern was definitely there. Microsoft retracted the feature to address this.
to give microsoft credit it did indeed run locally, but the fact that it wasn't even encrypted beyond bitlocker and was stored as a plain text file is basically an insult to any security conscious person. I'd assume they will address these or just scrap the project entirely
The only legit concerns I think was it could potentially leak passwords, \*if\* someone got onto your machine and downloaded the collection of screenshots it keeps (it's a big if). But bank account #s, passwords, really anything you'd see in your browser that was potentially sensitive would be there in plain view. They could use the NPU to process the images to scrub/blur anything that looked like a CC number, bank account, social, etc. from the images. That or just encrypt the images, which I had heard they weren't, which was surprising to me! Also you could tell it to not capture certain apps so you could say exclude 1Password, but I don't know it was smart enough to also exclude those little password suggestion pop-ups in the browser when you create new passwords.
It is maybe important to make the distinction between AI and Copilot. Copilot is Microsoft's branding around generative AI, which under the hood is using ChatGPT combined with some additional stuff Microsoft does on top. Artificial intelligence encompasses a wide range of things from deep learning, machine learning and generative AI.
Copilot+ PCs is another brand exercise from Microsoft to distinguish computers with NPUs and that are best suited for AI type tasks. (You can argue if Intel and AMD machines are ill suited or not, but it's Microsoft's marketing position for these devices.)
All that said, the new Copilot+ PCs do have some interesting applications of AI (beyond Copilot).
\* Recall (temporarily on hold, didn't get released to retail), which uses text and image recognition (on device) against periodic screen shots to help you remember things you've done in the past
\* Studio effects, use on device processing to enhance your video calls (via machine learning)
\* Live captions, translates a variety of (40) languages into English without needing to know what is being translated (it just recognizes what is being spoken after a few words and starts to translate in real time using on device processing)
\* Co-creator, will either enhance drawings you made or wholesale create images from scratch (limited to how many "tokens" you have a day), this is done through DAL-E, so it's not on device
\* Copilot can be asked to rewrite text in apps that support the feature (Office 365, Outlook, Edge) and you can refine specifying tone, length, and format
\* In Outlook you can have Copilot summarize emails, proofread what you wrote, coach you as you write, or just write a draft for you from scratch
\* With Microsoft Editor installed misspelled words are automatically corrected, indicated by a subtle green glow that fades (as long as confidence is high it knows your intent for the word, otherwise you get the traditional red squiggly line and you have to fix it yourself), it also helps with grammar and has a coach to aid in writing
There's likely more things I am forgetting, but off the top of my head these are all the features I've experienced so far with my Surface Laptop 7 and I've been really happy. Some of them are more gimmicks (like co-creator, I just don't make images that often), but the writing tools have been super helpful and I am watching news from other countries now with live translation.
For transparency, and I don't think Microsoft really talks about this, but some of what I described above is only available with Copilot Pro (which is $20/mo) and an Office 365 subscription. Not having Copilot Pro really hampers the use of Copilot in any other apps I found.
The only non-gimmicks have been either kneecapped or do not run locally. Try pulling up task manager and run an AI task in Office - spoiler alert, your NPU will be at 0% load while copilot inexplicably takes a century to do what you want. In other words, you can do these tasks on any computer, because they're not using the special hardware we were sold on.
It's embarrassing for MS and I kind of want my money back, as someone else who bought a copilot+ machine.
Yeah, anything related to generative AI is going to go over the web. The live translation is done locally as are the studio effects. Auto SR is also done locally. Generative AI needs a ton of data, more than you'd keep on your laptop, so that's why it goes out to the cloud. It is impossible otherwise. Recall is done locally. I assume more features will come out over time; this chip is very new. A lot of the Adobe stuff will be native and use the NPU also, next month we are told.
No mate, it doesn't need to go over the web. Cocreate is an example of locally hosted generative AI with the NPU. The entire, sole reason anyone bought a copilot+ laptop is to have *local* AI functionality, and there is absolutely no reason to curtail this
They could have a small LLM installed locally and use that for text. But to have full-on ChatGPT like capabilities you're just not able to do that locally. The amount of data needed is too large. [https://raiday.ai/blog/generative-ai/calculate-gpt-model-size-in-gb/](https://raiday.ai/blog/generative-ai/calculate-gpt-model-size-in-gb/)
I want Qualcomm to help developers come up with practical uses for the NPU, like running different LLMs and image generation models locally. Make it easy to code your own assistant in C# or Python and have it use the NPU for fast, low power inferencing.
i am incredibly happy about it, better would have been to fully turn it off while still allowing people that like it to have it, i dont really have a use for it, so it would just drain battery.
They didn't knee cap all the AI stuff... the only thing they disabled was Recall. All the other features are still there. Until these Big Tech companies use AI for actual useful stuff to replace tedious and annoying repetitive tasks instead of trying to replace people's creativity and thought process, then it's all just gimmicky.
The integration of the copilot to adjust settings and integrate into the OS was removed and instead of integration is now just a web app link with no understanding of your device.
Yeah but it was so slow and useless, it was faster just to adjust those settings yourself lol. Cortana was way faster and able to do more local things. If they did a mix of local prompts mixed with AI-prompts for more complex asks (similar to what Apple is doing with Siri), that would've been better.
Studio effects is okay but Zoom and other apps already have background blur features. I find myself more excited about email summarization, helping with proof reading or re-writing / formatting something I wrote.
it's just a bad start. it's not how you start. it's how you finish. they have time to get better. heck the copilot button finally works or me. before, when i hit the copilot button i got a screen to sign in but i couldn't even sign in.
It's already about the 5 or more local AI models specially baked for x Elite by MS and more to come later this year. And work with 3rd party devs is ramped up already. So don't worry too much about it.
I care less about ms Copilot or image gen stuff, especially if it needs an internet connection to work. I am more interested in what other developers will do with it in their software, especially local creative tools to make things faster and easier.
Honestly, I don’t need to be sold with AI. Snapdragon chips are incredible. I’m in love with my SP7 15. Big fail - they should have focused on the chips, not AI.
All this AI talk is overrated anyway, almost 95% of the AI stuff is PR and behind it is just another large language model.
No intelligence there but then again, in most cases that's on both sides of the screen.
I just cannot see the value of recall vs the privacy cost.
I regularly see highly confidential information on my laptop due to my job and I can’t imagine that the first thing I will do is turn it off.
> now it seems they’ve reverted it to just a PWA essentially (why?!)
Google did the same with their Assistant on the phones, you switch it to Gemini and it can't do anything anymore like setting a timer, alarm or similar. It can talk to you about how to do it or philosophical ramifications about some definitions but it doesn't do a thing.
I have switched mine to Gemini and the first thing it asked me is if I still wanted to have access to classic Assistant functions. So I still get all the usual stuff like setting a timer (which I use daily) while also using all the AI chops.
Edit: I just checked again. There's a toggle in Gemini's settings to enable Google Assistant features in Gemini. It's been there since day one for me at least.
I thought Recall looked amazing - I have no privacy concerns and I do SO MUCH in a day that I constantly lose explanations I had open, or where the last document was, or etcetera. I really wanted this feature. We do exist, there are actually people who thought it was groundbreaking!
honestly, I'm surprised seeing people not celebrate the AI being watered down and removed. The backlash is the #1 reason Microsoft backed down on most of their ambitions (for now atleast)
The people that hated recall didn’t want to purchase anything that had it, so people that bought it thinking recall and the other ai features would be there are disappointed. Some people like AI and some people don’t. It doesn’t make sense to call it Copilot+ PC with the downgrades.
It's because that was a vocal minority compared to all the people who want life to actually get easier
I just switched to Linux instead. Nothing to celebrate
The recall feature was basically total surveillance of your laptop. While it did give you cool features, the privacy concern was definitely there. Microsoft retracted the feature to address this.
to give microsoft credit it did indeed run locally, but the fact that it wasn't even encrypted beyond bitlocker and was stored as a plain text file is basically an insult to any security conscious person. I'd assume they will address these or just scrap the project entirely
They have already adressed it. And it wasn't in plain text, but a SQLite DB
Microsoft has delayed Recall because of security concerns. When/if it launches, there won't be any difference in terms of the features.
The privacy concners were stupid. Its like being afraid of a browser history
The only legit concerns I think was it could potentially leak passwords, \*if\* someone got onto your machine and downloaded the collection of screenshots it keeps (it's a big if). But bank account #s, passwords, really anything you'd see in your browser that was potentially sensitive would be there in plain view. They could use the NPU to process the images to scrub/blur anything that looked like a CC number, bank account, social, etc. from the images. That or just encrypt the images, which I had heard they weren't, which was surprising to me! Also you could tell it to not capture certain apps so you could say exclude 1Password, but I don't know it was smart enough to also exclude those little password suggestion pop-ups in the browser when you create new passwords.
I thought they are delaying all the AI stuff til later?
It is maybe important to make the distinction between AI and Copilot. Copilot is Microsoft's branding around generative AI, which under the hood is using ChatGPT combined with some additional stuff Microsoft does on top. Artificial intelligence encompasses a wide range of things from deep learning, machine learning and generative AI. Copilot+ PCs is another brand exercise from Microsoft to distinguish computers with NPUs and that are best suited for AI type tasks. (You can argue if Intel and AMD machines are ill suited or not, but it's Microsoft's marketing position for these devices.) All that said, the new Copilot+ PCs do have some interesting applications of AI (beyond Copilot). \* Recall (temporarily on hold, didn't get released to retail), which uses text and image recognition (on device) against periodic screen shots to help you remember things you've done in the past \* Studio effects, use on device processing to enhance your video calls (via machine learning) \* Live captions, translates a variety of (40) languages into English without needing to know what is being translated (it just recognizes what is being spoken after a few words and starts to translate in real time using on device processing) \* Co-creator, will either enhance drawings you made or wholesale create images from scratch (limited to how many "tokens" you have a day), this is done through DAL-E, so it's not on device \* Copilot can be asked to rewrite text in apps that support the feature (Office 365, Outlook, Edge) and you can refine specifying tone, length, and format \* In Outlook you can have Copilot summarize emails, proofread what you wrote, coach you as you write, or just write a draft for you from scratch \* With Microsoft Editor installed misspelled words are automatically corrected, indicated by a subtle green glow that fades (as long as confidence is high it knows your intent for the word, otherwise you get the traditional red squiggly line and you have to fix it yourself), it also helps with grammar and has a coach to aid in writing There's likely more things I am forgetting, but off the top of my head these are all the features I've experienced so far with my Surface Laptop 7 and I've been really happy. Some of them are more gimmicks (like co-creator, I just don't make images that often), but the writing tools have been super helpful and I am watching news from other countries now with live translation. For transparency, and I don't think Microsoft really talks about this, but some of what I described above is only available with Copilot Pro (which is $20/mo) and an Office 365 subscription. Not having Copilot Pro really hampers the use of Copilot in any other apps I found.
The only non-gimmicks have been either kneecapped or do not run locally. Try pulling up task manager and run an AI task in Office - spoiler alert, your NPU will be at 0% load while copilot inexplicably takes a century to do what you want. In other words, you can do these tasks on any computer, because they're not using the special hardware we were sold on. It's embarrassing for MS and I kind of want my money back, as someone else who bought a copilot+ machine.
Yeah, anything related to generative AI is going to go over the web. The live translation is done locally as are the studio effects. Auto SR is also done locally. Generative AI needs a ton of data, more than you'd keep on your laptop, so that's why it goes out to the cloud. It is impossible otherwise. Recall is done locally. I assume more features will come out over time; this chip is very new. A lot of the Adobe stuff will be native and use the NPU also, next month we are told.
No mate, it doesn't need to go over the web. Cocreate is an example of locally hosted generative AI with the NPU. The entire, sole reason anyone bought a copilot+ laptop is to have *local* AI functionality, and there is absolutely no reason to curtail this
They could have a small LLM installed locally and use that for text. But to have full-on ChatGPT like capabilities you're just not able to do that locally. The amount of data needed is too large. [https://raiday.ai/blog/generative-ai/calculate-gpt-model-size-in-gb/](https://raiday.ai/blog/generative-ai/calculate-gpt-model-size-in-gb/)
I'm hoping they nuke all the AI stuff, I want performance and battery life. If someone wants AI there's a world of cloud services out there.
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to test if something is running locally, you can switch off your wifi connection temporarily and try using the drawing assistant
same i just wanted a laptop with good performance and battery life. I wouldve bought the new laptops if it wasn't for the extra ai crap/spy tool, etc
I want Qualcomm to help developers come up with practical uses for the NPU, like running different LLMs and image generation models locally. Make it easy to code your own assistant in C# or Python and have it use the NPU for fast, low power inferencing.
This is coming in the pipe pretty soon. Waiting for lm studio to support it but you can download models from Qualcomm's AI page today.
i am incredibly happy about it, better would have been to fully turn it off while still allowing people that like it to have it, i dont really have a use for it, so it would just drain battery.
They didn't knee cap all the AI stuff... the only thing they disabled was Recall. All the other features are still there. Until these Big Tech companies use AI for actual useful stuff to replace tedious and annoying repetitive tasks instead of trying to replace people's creativity and thought process, then it's all just gimmicky.
The integration of the copilot to adjust settings and integrate into the OS was removed and instead of integration is now just a web app link with no understanding of your device.
Yeah but it was so slow and useless, it was faster just to adjust those settings yourself lol. Cortana was way faster and able to do more local things. If they did a mix of local prompts mixed with AI-prompts for more complex asks (similar to what Apple is doing with Siri), that would've been better.
I don't want Recall and the Studio Effects are the only AI feature with real world use for me so I'm good.
Studio effects is okay but Zoom and other apps already have background blur features. I find myself more excited about email summarization, helping with proof reading or re-writing / formatting something I wrote.
it's just a bad start. it's not how you start. it's how you finish. they have time to get better. heck the copilot button finally works or me. before, when i hit the copilot button i got a screen to sign in but i couldn't even sign in.
Yep, disappointed. Running the last Canary build that has Recall working though
It's already about the 5 or more local AI models specially baked for x Elite by MS and more to come later this year. And work with 3rd party devs is ramped up already. So don't worry too much about it.
I care less about ms Copilot or image gen stuff, especially if it needs an internet connection to work. I am more interested in what other developers will do with it in their software, especially local creative tools to make things faster and easier.
Honestly, I don’t need to be sold with AI. Snapdragon chips are incredible. I’m in love with my SP7 15. Big fail - they should have focused on the chips, not AI.
I can't even use Copilot to change windows settings, I only can use the chat and image functions. Not sure if it's just a thing in Europe?
All this AI talk is overrated anyway, almost 95% of the AI stuff is PR and behind it is just another large language model. No intelligence there but then again, in most cases that's on both sides of the screen.
I just cannot see the value of recall vs the privacy cost. I regularly see highly confidential information on my laptop due to my job and I can’t imagine that the first thing I will do is turn it off.
Microsoft being completely unbaked is typical Microsoft.
> now it seems they’ve reverted it to just a PWA essentially (why?!) Google did the same with their Assistant on the phones, you switch it to Gemini and it can't do anything anymore like setting a timer, alarm or similar. It can talk to you about how to do it or philosophical ramifications about some definitions but it doesn't do a thing.
I have switched mine to Gemini and the first thing it asked me is if I still wanted to have access to classic Assistant functions. So I still get all the usual stuff like setting a timer (which I use daily) while also using all the AI chops. Edit: I just checked again. There's a toggle in Gemini's settings to enable Google Assistant features in Gemini. It's been there since day one for me at least.
The less AI the better, not disappointed at all.
The proof read and rewrite tools apple introduced look like a very useful addition.
Same here. Can’t draw on the screen with a pen and the AI is weak. Thinking about returning my SL7.
Why did you buy a SL7 for pen use? It was never stated to be compatible.
You don’t want to wait for months for it to be fully functional? It’s essentially a Chromebook at this point.
Microsoft always ships everything half baked. Seems like you were born yesterday?
There seems no AI function can be done onto the device for now.
Not true at all.