Half the argument about Windows AI is really an argument about one question - what leaves the machine? The answer differs completely by feature. This page splits them carefully, using what Microsoft itself documents, and marks clearly where the honest answer is "trust, but verify".
Two true sentences cause endless confusion because they are about different features: "Copilot sends your prompts to Microsoft's cloud" and "Recall keeps everything on your PC". Blend them into one blob called "Windows AI" and every discussion goes wrong from the first line. This page separates the stack properly - the cloud assistant, the local snapshot memory, the on-device extras - and adds the piece almost nobody mentions: the diagnostic data Windows has always collected, which is a different system with different switches. Read it before you decide what to fear and what to simply switch off.
When you chat with the Copilot app, your prompt travels to Microsoft's servers, the model runs there, and the answer travels back. That is not a scandal - it is the architecture of every large AI assistant, including the ones in browsers and phones. The consequences are the ordinary cloud ones: your prompts are handled under Microsoft's consumer terms and privacy statement, and a work conversation about confidential material does not belong in a personal cloud assistant. If you never open the app, it is not chatting on your behalf in the background. Grade it as you would any cloud service: useful, account-based, and not the place for secrets.
Microsoft's Recall documentation states the opposite architecture: snapshots and the information extracted from them are saved and encrypted on your local hard drive, Recall does not share them with Microsoft or third parties, access is gated by Windows Hello, and device encryption must be on. The search that finds things in your snapshots runs on the device. You are entitled to decide you still do not want a photographic memory on your PC - that is a values call, and the off switch plus delete-all honours it completely. But the claim that Recall uploads your screen to Microsoft is contradicted by Microsoft's own published design, and this page will not repeat it.
Click to Do's screen analysis and the improved search's semantic indexing are built on the NPU - the entire selling point of Copilot+ hardware is that this work happens on the device. Microsoft describes the semantic index as built locally so your files can be found by meaning. Ordinary caveats apply: invoke an action inside Click to Do that drafts with a cloud service and that specific action uses the cloud - the boundary is the action you choose, which is a reasonable design. As always, the control is per feature, in Settings, and reversible.
Windows has sent diagnostic (telemetry) data since long before Copilot - usage and reliability information whose level you choose under Settings > Privacy & security > Diagnostics & feedback. Turning off every AI feature changes nothing there, and turning telemetry down changes nothing about AI. Conflating the two systems produces the most common false belief in this area: "I removed Copilot, so Windows sends nothing now." It sends what diagnostics you allow, exactly as it did in 2019. Handle each system with its own switches and both conversations become refreshingly simple.
Several AI features only function signed in: the Copilot app personalises by account, Paint's generator and Notepad's Rewrite require a Microsoft account to run at all. A PC used with a local account therefore has a whole layer of AI that is present but inert - no sign-in, no service. That is not an argument against Microsoft accounts (sync, Store and recovery all get easier with one); it is simply the accurate map. Your account state is a privacy setting in its own right, and like the others it deserves a deliberate choice rather than an accident of setup.
End the exercise the way this series keeps recommending: a written line per feature. Copilot app - cloud, kept or removed by taste. Recall - local per Microsoft, opt in only, mine is off/on deliberately. Click to Do and search - local, taste. Diagnostics - a separate dial, set separately. That one paragraph replaces an evening of contradictory videos, and when a feature update changes something, you can spot the change against your own baseline. Privacy you can describe is privacy you actually have.
Every step shown live on a real Windows 11 PC - which AI features go, which stay, and the honest limits of removing them.
▶️ Watch Full VideoMicrosoft states that Recall snapshots stay on your device, are encrypted, and are not shared with Microsoft or third parties - data that never reaches Microsoft cannot be trained on by Microsoft. If you remain uncomfortable, the honest resolution is the one this page keeps offering: Recall is opt in, switches off in one toggle, and its snapshots delete from the same settings page.
The Copilot app does not hold conversations by itself - no prompts are sent for a chat nobody is having. Windows itself still sends whatever diagnostic data level you have chosen in Privacy settings, which is a separate system from the AI features. That distinction is worth keeping: removing Copilot stops Copilot, not telemetry; the Diagnostics & feedback page is where telemetry is set.
An office should decide by data rules, not by vibes. Client-confidential text does not belong in a consumer cloud assistant - that argues for policy-blocking Copilot or using the organisation's governed Microsoft 365 Copilot instead. Local features like Recall raise a records question (a searchable screen history on a work PC) that compliance should answer deliberately. Both are policy decisions with owners - which is exactly how this series treats them.