Microsoft’s plans to introduce a “Recall” feature powered by artificial intelligence in its Copilot+ PCs lineup has evoked considerable privacy concerns. But the extent to which these concerns are fully justified remains a somewhat open question at the moment.

Recall is technology that Microsoft has described as enabling users to easily find and remember whatever they might have seen on their PC. It works by taking periodic snapshots of a user’s screen, analyzing those images, and storing them in a way that lets the user search for things they might have seen in apps, websites, documents, and images using natural language.