Microsoft is developing ways to have its AI models find things on your PC that a regular search function could never achieve, but it requires some data harvesting for it to work. We first saw this with Copilot+'s Recall feature, which stores a digital memory of everything you did on a given day. For it to work, it has to take screenshots of your desktop and store the information, something that got Microsoft into big trouble when people discovered it.

Now, it seems the company wants to use an LLM to peek into your audio and video files to make them searchable. Fortunately, the feature seems to be opt-in, but it is an interesting insight into how companies will use our data in the future.

Microsoft is working on a way to search within video and audio files

This change was first spotted by XenoPanther on X. While digging through the code for build 27695, they found some text for a work-in-progress feature. By the looks of it, Microsoft will ask if the user wants to download an AI model that will go through all of their videos and audio files. It'll then transcribe its contents and index them so you can search for them at a later date.

Given how we've only seen references to a potential new feature, there's no guarantee that it will ever come to light. However, it would fit in nicely with Microsoft's current plans to make Copilot "the new Start button," giving it more power to find files on your computer. Before it can do that, Microsoft needs to convince people to use the tools that are already available, including the controversial Recall feature's inevitable return.