Have a available personal search engine being able to instantly find what you need within your digital life can be really useful. Rewind AI does just that: it is a chatbot that knows everything about the user’s activities, keeps track of web browser history, sent and received e-mails, what was said and written during online meetings, documents worked on and much more.
In an era where the user tracking and the surveillance of individuals is growing worryingly, in an era in which the monetization of personal data is unfortunately always in the first place, the idea of a assistant like Rewind AI it sounds so terrifying that it even takes on dystopian characters.
And instead Rewind AI intelligently speaks of privacyhighlighting the topic. The application does not send any data to remote servers: all the information collected on users’ devices is always and in any case stored on them. The only “external call” that Rewind AI makes is the one aimed at verifying the possible availability of updates. The call is to block by firewall all connection attempts to remote hosts: Rewind AI continues to work without problems.
How Rewind AI works
We have already summarized the general principles behind how Rewind AI works. Currently only available for systems macOS based on Apple Silicon SoCs (ARM-derived M1 and M2 SoCs) and for iOS, the application records everything when it appears on the screen and simultaneously tracks the content of all audio streams. Rewind AI also performs tasks speech-to-text transforming into text every sentence and every single word spoken, including dialogues during the video conferencing. This way Rewind AI users can run searches full-text on everything that was shown on the display of each device.
The appellation Rewind comes from the English term translatable as “rewind”. Yes, because Rewind AI features one timeline or “timeline” which shows in visual form all the operations carried out in the past using the device. In this way it is possible to “rewind the tape” and return to the information and contents elaborated some time ago.
A nice advantage if you think that recent studies show how the 90% of memories are forgotten after a week.
In the case of macOS systems based on Apple Silicon, Rewind AI does not “stress” the system resources. On mobile, however, there is a marked consumption of the drumswhich contributes to reducing its autonomy.
In practice, Rewind AI exploits the Accessibility APIs to identify the foreground screen and continuously collects screenshots. The Apple Vision framework allows for engine activation OCR for the optical recognition of the characters present in each screen gradually acquired. The sequence of captured screenshots it is then saved locally in the form of H.264 video compressed with the tool FFmpeg.
As for the Audio RecordingRewind AI leverages the OpenAI Whisper engine by storing information and transcript within a local SQLite database.
However, the user has the option to exclude windows specifications from any logging activity. The contents of the incognito windows that can be managed with the various browsers are never taken into consideration by Rewind AI.
Data encryption is missing
While Rewind AI is respectful of each user’s privacy, there is currently no support for it encryption some data. It is true that all the information remains saved on the local system but the cold data is accessible with any application authorized to access without limitations to the file system.
Similarly, an attacker who successfully unlocked the Mac system or iOS device could read the content of the recordings acquired over time by Rewind AI.
Whether an attacker or a component malicious software managed to make their way into the user’s devices, the problem would obviously be much more serious. Because not only the information collected by Rewind AI would be exposed but also everything present on the single device.
In any case, the adoption of a solution a public key for data protection it might make sense. Rewind AI may use a public key to encrypt recordings by enforcing the use of the corresponding one private key for any search operation. This way users would have to authenticate to unlock the search interface.
When Rewind AI really comes in handy
An application like the one we have presented today represents a unique in its category. While the open source world is hard at work developing something similar, there is currently no similar alternative to Rewind AI.
The idea behind the project is to make computers and modern mobile devices even more useful, helping us to do things we couldn’t do on our own.
Suppose you have participated in a video conference in the previous days or weeks. Something important has been said but you just can’t remember who said it or you can’t remember the exact words you said. With a simple text searchit becomes very easy to trace the content of one’s interest which, among other things, thanks to the OCR engine, can be immediately copied and pasted elsewhere (for example a word processor).
With the same approach, you can find documents and Web sites that deal with a particular subject; those same resources on which we had focused carefully in the past, considering them interesting.
The search for a term it also brings up all the resources that have a direct relationship with that word or phrase. So they can connect ideas different by combining, for example, resources found on the Web, topics that emerged during voice and video chats, documents and white paper examined, communications exchanged with employees, collaborators and colleagues through the instant messaging.
How much does Rewind AI cost and… the conclusions
The only drawback is the price list currently practiced by Rewind AI. The advantage is that using the platform in free mode it is still possible to test its operation on macOS and iOS. Indeed, it is possible to carry out up to 50 searches for free drawing on the information collected. Paid plans have a cost variable, strictly correlated with the number of “rewind” usable every month.
The idea behind the application is undoubtedly excellent: it is a bit like being able to count on a colleague who is always available, on a well-informed secretary on every facet of one’s activities, capable of responding effectively and pertinently to every question on what you have done in the past, about your planned activities, open documents and so on.
Rewind AI doesn’t want and shouldn’t please everyone. Blocking all network communications of the application, however, you have an additional guarantee that the program does not transmit any personal data elsewhere.
Of course, the price is not within everyone’s reach and the free plan it’s pretty bare-bones to really be of any practical use. However, the intuition of the platform developers pays off. So accurate that it was not possible to ignore it. And the post curated by CEO Dan Siroker describes the main reasons that led to the birth of Rewind AI.