When I lose track of a document, the best shot I have at getting it back is to search my Google Chrome history or Google Drive for (what I think is) the title. If I can't get the title right, it's over.
And don't get me started on trying to track down "that one video where this person was talking about that thing". Impossible.
Which brings us to one of the more interesting questions that a company is asking: what if you could remember everything?
Everything you've seen, said or heard
Rewind sits on your Mac and listens. To everything. Every webpage you visit. Every Zoom call you're in. Every thing you say in that call.
And it logs it on your computer.
Then, later, when you're searching for that thing - maybe you're wondering when the last time you talked to X was - Rewind's "Ask Rewind" digs up those Zoom calls and writes an answer for you, citing those specific Zoom calls.
You can also literally rewind history. Clicking the app brings up a timeline of your screen, which you can use to play back what you were looking at in the afternoon 3 months ago.
That privacy question
I can see it on your face: an app recording everything?! Who's watching?!
It's not right to say that Rewind literally doesn't send data anywhere. It does. When you ask Rewind a question, it'll dig up those specific bits, send it to OpenAI, then get the response back.
So: better than sending literally everything, but it's not sending nothing at all.
AI-first productivity
We love that Rewind is trying this. Companies bolting on chatbots everywhere is great, but Rewind is part of a new group of truly AI-first tools.
If you find yourself frantically trying to remember everything all the time, Rewind might be your key to success.
Oddly, you might find it difficult to adapt to Rewind at the beginning. But once you start to let Rewind carry the mental burden of retracing your steps, you'll be off to the races.