New Mac app wants to record everything you do—so you can “rewind” it later

Yesterday, an organization known as Rewind AI introduced a self-titled software product for Macs with Apple Silicon that reportedly retains a extremely compressed, searchable file of all the pieces you do regionally in your Mac and allows you to “rewind” time to see it later. When you overlook one thing you’ve got “seen, mentioned, or heard,” Rewind needs that will help you discover it simply.

Rewind AI claims its product shops all recording knowledge regionally in your machine and doesn’t require cloud integration. Amongst its guarantees, Rewind will reportedly allow you to rewind Zoom conferences and pull data from them in a searchable type.

In a video demo on Rewind.AI’s website, the app opens when a person presses Command+Shift+Area. The search bar suggests typing “something you’ve got seen, mentioned, or heard.” It additionally exhibits a timeline on the backside of the display screen that represents earlier actions in apps.

After trying to find “tps studies,” the video depicts a grid view of each time Rewind has encountered the phrase “tps studies” as audio or textual content in any app, together with Zoom chats, textual content messages, emails, Slack conversations, and Phrase paperwork. It describes filtering the outcomes by app—and the flexibility to repeat and paste from these previous situations if obligatory.

Based by Dan Siroker and Brett Bejcek, Rewind AI consists of a small distant staff situated in numerous cities across the US. Parts of the corporate beforehand created Scribe, a precursor to Rewind that received some press attention in 2021. In an introductory blog post, Rewind AI co-founder Dan Siroker writes, “What if we might use expertise to reinforce our reminiscence the identical approach a listening to help can increase our listening to?”

How does it work?

Rewind AI offers few particulars in regards to the app’s back-end expertise however describes “mind-boggling compression” that may reportedly compress recording knowledge as much as 3,750 instances “with no main lack of high quality,” giving an instance of 10.5GB of information squeezed down to only 2.8MB. Rewind says that even on a small arduous drive, “you possibly can retailer years of recordings”—a heady declare, to make sure.

The Rewind website additionally describes utilizing OCR to seize textual content content material and automatic speech recognition to mechanically transcribe something you’ve got mentioned or heard, together with in conferences, in order that “you by no means have to fret about shedding this content material once more.”

(If Rewind converts all the pieces it sees and hears into plain textual content, that may clarify the huge compression ratio. The demo didn’t present any stay video or audio recording playback, for instance, simply static screenshots with highlighted textual content. We have now requested Rewind AI to make clear this level and can replace the article if we obtain a response.)

Rewind AI additionally says that Apple Silicon Macs with M1 and M2 chips are key to creating the product work in a “just about imperceptible” approach, using “just about each a part of the System on a Chip.”

Potential privateness points

Whereas laying out the imaginative and prescient for Rewind AI within the weblog publish talked about above, Siroker writes, “Our imaginative and prescient is to provide people excellent reminiscence.” However commenters on Twitter and YouTube have already begun stating situations the place “excellent reminiscence” might backfire.

For instance, Rewind would possibly expose its customers to potential abuse from overbearing companions, bosses, law enforcement, or repressive governments; legal issues from recording delicate data; and consent issues round recording different folks in conferences.

Rewind addresses a few of these considerations on its website, saying, “We retailer the entire recordings regionally in your Mac. Solely you might have entry to them.” Their demo website also says that you’ll pause or delete recordings at any time, and you’ll mechanically exclude sure apps out of your recorded historical past, together with non-public searching modes in browsers.

So far as acquiring permission to file a gathering with different members, Rewind offers its personal assist web page titled “Everything you need to know about consent” that features recommendation corresponding to “Earlier than you file somebody, it’s best to at all times ask for his or her consent.” The web page recommends telling folks the assembly can be recorded—maybe forward of time—and that customers observe all native legal guidelines associated to recording conversations.

Privateness and moral considerations apart, Andreessen Horowitz is taking the expertise critically sufficient to guide a $10 million spherical of funding at a valuation of $75 million. The enterprise capital agency wrote about its reasons for investing in Rewind, posing the product as a remedy for data overload.

At the moment, the Rewind product just isn’t publicly accessible, however anybody can request “Early Entry” on the Rewind web site. We reached out to Rewind and requested for an opportunity to strive the software program.