Microsoft's Windows Recall shown working on PC without AI hardware

Microsoft wants people to move off Windows 10 and move onto Windows 11, and one of the ways the company intends to attract customers to its latest operating system is AI-powered PCs - and the exclusive features that come with them.

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Microsoft only recently announced a selection of AI PCs in the form of new Copilot+ laptops. These laptops are different from traditional versions as they feature a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which is a piece of hardware dedicated to running AI tasks locally. Microsoft has locked many, if not all of its of Copilot+'s attractive features behind this hardware requirement in a bid to entice customers to go out and purchase a new Copilot+ PC.

One of the most talked about Copilot+ features is Windows Recall, which enables a user to ask the Copilot AI in natural language to show them what they were doing on the PC at specific times. For example, if a user at 4pm forgot what they were doing at 1pm they would be able to ask the AI and it would show them what was on their desktop at 1pm. Recall is able to create this timeline of a users desktop by taking screenshots of the desktop every few minutes, which are then stored locally.

However, Microsoft's system requirements for Recall - 16GB of RAM and a Copilot+ certified PC - may be closer to loose guidelines than strict requirements as a Windows user has managed to get Recall to work on a non-Copilot PC. The Windows engineer goes by the name Albacore, who posted to Mastadon saying they got Recall to work on a "Snapdragon 7c+ Gen3, 3.4 GB of RAM, no NPU in sight."

The engineer also noted, "It's surprisingly good even on something this low spec."

Furthermore, Albacore said, "I am able to save snapshots, OCR them, access the timeline, and perform text as well as visual searches across it, all offline."