OpenAI now lets you screenshot your privacy in the foot • The Register

https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/22/openai_chronicle_no_privacy_screenshot/

Publish Date: 2026-04-22 15:56:00

Those who cannot remember Microsoft Recall are condemned to repeat it.

Today, that applies to OpenAI, which has quietly introduced an opt-in research preview called Chronicle. It’s designed to capture the user’s screen and feed those images to OpenAI’s Codex agent so it has access to more contextual information.

“Chronicle augments Codex memories with context from your screen,” the company explains in its documentation. “When you prompt Codex, those memories can help it understand what you’ve been working on with less need for you to restate context.”

For those who have forgotten or may have missed the outcry, Microsoft in 2024 introduced a Windows feature called Recall that takes screenshots of the user’s desktop environment every few seconds and saves the results to disk. The idea is that providing Copilot services with more contextual information makes them more useful.

The cybersecurity community promptly piled on, describing Recall as a keylogger, a privacy nightmare, and litigation bait. After a few months of public bludgeoning, Microsoft made some revisions to appease critics.

Nonetheless, browser maker Brave went on to offer Recall screenshot blocking, which looks like a worthwhile endeavor given our own tests that found Recall saving images of credit card numbers and passwords despite supposed sensitive information filters.

OpenAI perhaps forgot about Microsoft’s reputational flogging, or maybe it believes the needs of the model outweigh the needs of the few who bother with security and privacy. Another possibility is that the AI biz has embraced masochism as a public relations strategy.

No sooner had OpenAI’s Chronicle documentation appeared this week than security researcher Michael Taggart took note of the resemblance, writing, “Oh my god, OpenAI reinvented Recall, but for macOS.”

On the plus…

Source