I just read the news that Microsoft is bringing back the hated Recall feature to Windows 11. If you’re not familiar with Recall, it takes screenshots every three seconds that you can search with AI, so you always have a way of recalling everything that’s happened on your PC.
For rather obvious reasons, Recall is a complete security nightmare and has largely been decried by the security industry.
Recall is the perfect example of an AI feature that nobody asked for and nobody really wants, but that we’re going to get anyway.
Garmin backlash
At least we’re not being asked to pay for Recall as well, which would add insult to injury as many Garmin watch owners found out recently when a new Garmin Connect+ subscription option full of AI-powered insights into your running performance was released to Garmin owners, much to their chagrin.
In one fell swoop Garmin turned a product that you could just buy and own with a one-off purchase into an ongoing subscription service. Rather predictably people were not happy.
TechRadar’s Fitness Editor, Matt Evans summed up the problem succinctly when he wrote, “While Garmin has been very careful in its messaging, insisting that everything currently free will remain free, users believe they will eventually have to either leave the platform or resort to paying for a usable version of it.”
AI just seems to be in everything these days, whether we like it or not. You can find AI in new Samsung fridges, health and fitness apps, social media apps, your mobile phone, Alexa speakers, image editors, and Google search, not to mention AI chatbots themselves, like ChatGPT, which will soon start taking over from traditional search engines and computer interfaces.
OK, computer
But did anyone ask for this? When Google AI Overviews started showing up in my Google search results I knew a line had been crossed. Google describes AI Overviews as “one of our most popular Search features — now used by more than a billion people”, but to me, and a lot of people I know, they just seem a bit annoying and hard to turn off.
Personally, I don’t want an AI Overview getting in the way when I do a web search. Often I’m simply trying to find a particular website I’ve seen before and now I have to scroll down even further to get to the actual search results.
Google has already created an AI Mode in beta that it’s currently testing. Rather than offering an AI Overview the new mode is an actual AI search, so you can ask follow-up questions and have a human-like conversation, if you want.
There’s no doubt that AI Mode will be impressive, but I miss the old Google which didn’t have so many options and just did what it was designed to do – a simple and quick web search. That was, after all, why Google became popular.
To help stem the tide of unwanted AI features I’ve been inundated with I’ve also turned off AI Notifications summaries on my iPhone – they’re not only wrong sometimes, but it’s just easier to read the actual messages people send you, not a summary of it that saves about four words of text.
Other Apple Intelligence features like Genmoji and Image Playground sit unused on my iPhone after the initial buzz has worn off.
Smarter, better
I think AI can be a great tool to make you more productive and to help you drum up ideas, but why is there an assumption from the big tech companies that we want it in absolutely everything?
Even writing this document in Google Docs I’ve got Gemini popping up asking me if it wants me to help write the document. No thank you Gemini, or should I call you the new Clippy?
In fact, Clippy, Microsoft’s staggeringly unhelpful assistant included with Windows 97, was a perfect example of a technology designed to make your life easier that ended up making it more difficult. It constantly popped up whenever you tried to do anything and just got in the way. Microsoft should have learned from that experience.
AI can be fun and useful, but only when you choose to use it. The recent image trends for generating a box set action figure of yourself, or showing you what your pet would look like if it were a human are a great way to have some fun with AI, but does that mean it should be in everything I use?
Of course not. AI is exciting, offers almost infinite possibilities, and has the potential to change our lives for the better, but please don't force it on us when we didn't ask for it.
Which brings us back to Recall. Let's just hope that it means we won't forget the lessons of the past next time and there's an easy way to turn it off.
