Trust? (Premium)

Yet another strategy shift for Copilot may not seem that interesting, but today's news arrived with a belated nod to an inconvenient truth: Many customers don't trust Microsoft. and they're leery of AI. And the speed at which the software giant has jammed AI into every nook and cranny in its ecosystem isn't just disconcerting, it's scary. And it feels like Microsoft has been making it up as it went, casting aside the understandable concerns we have about privacy and security.

This ignorance was clear in during Microsoft's Copilot+ PC announcement this past May. When Yusuf Mehdi launched into his starry-eyed description of Recall, a feature that would use AI to "access virtually anything you have ever seen on your PC," I immediately saw how many in the Windows community would react to this incursion. Detailing why this was safe was key to answering the critics, and I assumed Mehdi would do just that. But after a demo, he simply said that Recall was built with "built with responsible AI principles," which is meaningless, and "aligned with [Microsoft's] standards," which could be construed as malicious, given the company's chaotic push to dominate the AI era at all costs.

It wasn't all bad. Microsoft wouldn't use Recall data to train AI, he said, and that data would stay on the PC where it would be private and secure and under the user's control. But distrust of Microsoft is so widespread that these claims were mocked--surely, it was only a matter of time before that data moved off the PC, by design or because of hacks--and then undermined when hackers bolted Recall onto non-Copilot+ PCs and reported that this system wasn't as secure as Microsoft promised.

I remain critical of that episode for all the right reasons, but sitting in the audience during the announcement that day and not privy to the bad news to come, I was worried. Microsoft wasn't just ignoring the distrust it had earned. It didn't seem to even understand how its customers felt about it and AI. Quite the opposite.

What happened, happened. Microsoft delayed Recall, delighting critics who hoped that perhaps it would never resurface. Robbed of their marquee new feature, Copilot+ PCs launched with few compelling AI features and were unfairly criticized for compatibility issues that won't impact most users. And the summer progressed with no real news about Recall or when or how Copilot+ PCs would improve.

Today, we have answers.

Six months after Microsoft launched this new platform, Microsoft recently announced the new schedule for Recall, which will indeed ship soon in preview and with some privacy and security upgrades that will do little to silence its biggest critics. Today, it announced new unique features for Copilot+ PCs, like Click to Do, AI-powered File Explorer search, and Super resolution in Photos. And for what feels like the 17th time, it is updating the Copilot app in Windows 11 and elsewhere--for all users--with a new look and feel, and new...