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Comment by southernplaces7 | Hacker News Reader

As is the case with just about all tech service offerings these days, whether they charge you or not, my first question is: How much of the info it extracts from me to provide me with this service is it going to hoard and then resell to others for the sake of "improving user experience" or some other bullshit justification for extracting more money.

The ugly thing is that this vast privacy invasion and resell has become so pervasively normalized that even the fucking services which you pay for almost universally sell off to others ad nauseam anything about you that isn't nailed down.

Since this thing offers to give you personalized AI based on everything you see and do in your day, that's some very private, juicy info to resell.

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Perhaps "limitless" refers to what they are allowed to do with the data/information they collect.

NB. Data/information can be transferred to other entities in ways that not meet the definition of "resell".1

In addition to transfer, there must be limits on _use_. Obviously a "restriction" like, "The company shall be limited to using the data to improve the service" is meaningless. Defeating privacy improves the service.

1. Years ago, when Facebook was responding to the media with the line, "We do not sell your data", they were sharing it for free. Not to mention leaking it. https://themarkup.org/the-breakdown/2021/09/02/what-does-it-...

Can't wait for the enterprise version which will take notes on what I do all day and then send them off to my boss.

The CEO said on Twitter: "In fact, we built Confidential Cloud in such a way that only you can decrypt your data. Your employer, we as software providers, and the government cannot decrypt your data without your permission, even with a subpoena to do so."

So I think a monthly subscription is the business model, not ads.

I do think they’re unlikely to sell user data, but it’s important to note that their privacy claims aren’t true and it would be possible for them to[1].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40044348

This side steps the question though. Transcription isn’t happening on the device, which means your raw audio is sent off to someone else’s computer. Whether or not it is finally stored in some secure manner is irrelevant at that point.

They do make some effort to push the “confidential cloud” aspect of their product, where the AI is supposed to somehow operate on your encrypted data, but these days I only believe it when I see the white paper. It is unfortunately quite common in our industry is to posture as more security-conscious and privacy-focused than you actually are.

And for some reason that's not illegal

I’m gonna doubt they’re operating AI on encrypted cloud data. In other words, there’s no technical reason they couldn’t be listening to your conversations.

If these guys have accomplished homomorphic encryption they shouldn’t be building a wearable, they should be licensing their IP to Apple.

They're definitely marketing this as if they were Apple. If this takes off I'm betting on Apple buying them out.

Every rumor points at Apple announcing OS integration of local LLM assistant stuff at WWDC in June, with specialized chips to go with it. I suspect they're going to Sherlock a lot of small "AI" companies simultaneously.

It's encrypted, but they have the keys. Wouldn't want anyone else to access the data without paying the toll, after all.

There’s three options:

1. The data is encrypted and they can’t operate on it in the cloud. 2. The data is not encrypted. 3. The data is encrypted and they have built a state of the art homomorphic encryption algorithm for their AI to operate on.

I’m going to guess it’s #1, not #3.

It's all sent to OpenAI for the LLM processing, so you'd better make sure you're happy with them getting text transcripts of everything that ever shows up on your computer screen.

When I saw them compare it to E2EE, since that’s at least a specific thing that can’t really be misinterpreted, I thought they were serious, but turns out it’s not at all[1] and they are advertising themselves as being far more private and secure than they actually are. Considering their investor list[2], maybe this is more common than we realise?

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40044348

[2]: https://www.rewind.ai/about#:~:text=Our%20investors

It practically reads as satire it’s so on the nose.

Especially disappointing given that before they renamed the company they were built on the idea that everything was stored locally. Seems like a pivot solely to gain from the AI hype cycle.

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