Rewind AI is designed to make a person’s recent digital activity searchable. It records what users see, say, and hear on a laptop, then lets them look back or ask questions about those moments. The idea may help recover a forgotten detail, but it also puts privacy at the center of the product.
A searchable record of laptop activity
Rewind uses a laptop’s microphone and webcam, along with Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR), to collect information from activity on the device. The result is intended to be a personal record that users can search, rather than a simple list of files or browsing history.
That record could be useful when someone needs to recall a detail from a Zoom call or find a website they visited earlier. Instead of retracing steps manually, a user can search for a moment they remember. Rewind’s assistant also allows questions about past activity, such as “What did I do last Friday?”
The article describes this assistant as powered by GPT-4 and presents it as a 24/7 virtual assistant. Users can ask about what they have done and receive an answer based on relevant moments in their recorded activity.
How the company describes its privacy safeguards
Recording a broad range of personal activity raises an obvious question: where does that information go? According to Rewind AI, the collection and storage happen locally on the user’s device, rather than in the cloud. The company says this means it cannot access users’ personal data, even if subpoenaed.
Users can delete locally stored data at any time. They can also exclude particular apps or websites from collection, including visits made in incognito or private browsing, if they configure the tool to do so.
There is one stated exception to the local-only approach. When a user asks a question, Rewind searches locally for relevant moments and sends selected text to OpenAI so GPT-4 can generate an answer. The company says that video recordings and audio files stay on the machine.
“A search is done locally to find the most relevant moments based on your question. Rewind sends only the text from those moments to OpenAI in order to generate an answer to your question. No video recordings or audio files ever leave your machine.”
Those details describe the company’s stated design and promise. They also make the distinction between local recordings and text sent for an answer central to understanding how the product works.
Availability and subscription options
At the time described in the source article, Rewind worked only on Mac laptops with Apple Silicon. iOS, Android, Windows, and Linux were not supported. That limits who can use it, while the article points out that a laptop can be turned off and set aside more easily than a phone that people carry with them.
The service is subscription-based. The basic $10 model includes 10 Rewinds Per Month, Unlimited Recordings, Unlimited Transcription, and Unlimited Devices. The $30 premium version has no usage cap and promises users the CEO’s phone number for customer support.
These plans describe different usage limits, but the product’s central tradeoff remains the same: a more complete searchable record could make everyday recall easier, while also collecting sensitive information about personal activity.
The people behind Rewind
The company is described as a small team operating across the U.S. and Canada. Its founders are Brett Bejcek, a data scientist and consultant with stints at Spotify and PwC, and Dan Siroker, a former Director of Analytics for President Obama’s first presidential campaign in 2008 and product manager at Google.
For prospective users, the practical questions are how much activity they want recorded, which apps or websites they would exclude, and whether they are comfortable with selected text being sent to OpenAI when they ask a question. Rewind’s appeal depends on making past activity easy to retrieve; its privacy approach depends on users understanding what stays on the device and what leaves it.