Not defending M$, but this sounds pretty much like a browser history feature, but for your desktop. Since most people are using their browser for 90% of the tasks they perform on their computer, this probably won't phase them.
Still, if this feature hits my laptop, it's going to be disabled. I have never needed to know what specifically I was doing on my computer three weeks ago on Wednesday around 2pm.
What's the use case for something like this?
This feature sounds like something an employer would want to use, if they aren't already, to spy on their employees.
Yeah I think just general data harvesting for Microsoft. Also I'd suspect if you were doing something like pirating TV shows maybe you could get busted that way even with a VPN? If the AI is set up to recognize it and report it I mean.
I could see it being handy for work, sometimes when designing parts I'll find a component that looks like a good fit but will forget to note it down or bookmark it.
Summarizing previous conversations with a customer for support via email/chat would also be nice, so I don't have to manually go through a bunch of threads to remember what products they have and such.
It sounds like these use cases would be better served if this feature was a specific, opt-in available in an enterprise version or a separate, third-party product (i.e. screen capture software that will ONLY record what you do in the software in question, when you want it to).
But baked into a consumer OS (not the business version) seems excessive. Who knows, maybe people will find good uses for it at home. I'm cynical and don't believe that M$ designed this for the user's benefit.
On the positive side (at least for now), this is a local-only, encrypted data feature.
Ahh, so you want to know what Joe did last friday afternoon on companys work PC? No problem, you can unlock this fearure either for mere $3 for this specific case or low low $25 monthly subscription for spying on Joe all the time ... probably someone over in MS