Technology

The statement you quoted is itself a lie. It talks about snapshots, when that's not at all what Recall is about. It takes snapshots, true. But it does not matter to MS whether the snapshots themselves are saved, or where. "Recall does not share snapshots or associated data" is a reference solely to the snapshot itself, not the data Recall creates from it.

Here's what really happens. Once a snapshot is taken, it is analyzed with AI as well as converted into text (if text is present) and all that content (including passwords, banking details, medical records, whatever passes the desktop when a snapshot is taken) plus its local AI analysis is kept in a local database. That shrinks its size to almost nothing, making it much easier for MS to collect. This secretive local database itself is inaccessible to you (even as admin), one you have zero rights to control or delete or edit or even view, one over which you are never given any permissions, and at regular intervals that database is scraped and sent back to MS to use in data aggregation and resale and AI training and whatever the fuck else they want to do with it. Sure, you can turn off Recall in the AI settings, but it has now been proven that any Windows update just turns it all back on again.

Knowing this, go back and reread their statement in regard to snapshots. The entire thing is a misdirection and never once addresses the real payload of Recall and why MS, even after they pinky swore they had dropped it, they continued partnering with hardware makers to deliver "Recall-ready" PCs that already have the requisite NPU on the motherboard, which are needed to do all that local data OCR and analysis on the snapshots that don't even matter to MS once they've been scraped for content.