Increasingly popular AI notetakers spark legal and privacy concerns
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What are AI note‑takers and why are they appearing in business meetings?
Time for our daily tech and business reports. AI note takers inviting themselves to business meetings, and that's creating some privacy concerns. For a closer look, we turn to the KCBS Ring Central Newsline and talk with Bloomberg's Issy Lepowski. Issy, thanks for the time. Sure. Thanks for having me. OK, tell me about these AI note takers. So I decide that I'm going to have a Zoom meeting and then instead of people, I get bots?
Yeah.
Well, I think, you know, there are humans involved. So I think a lot of your listeners are probably familiar with you join a Zoom meeting and maybe there are four other people on the meeting. You see their faces and then you also see these sort of empty screens and they might say Otter AI or Read AI note taker.
How do AI note‑takers work in Zoom calls and what consent issues arise?
And they're basically letting you know that whoever brought these bots to the meeting is going to be transcribing every word, committing it to the record and then coming up with these summaries after the fact. The problem emerges when the people who invited these things don't necessarily ask consent, or even worse, when they send these bots in their place because they want to skip the meeting and just get the ClipsNotes after.
Can is it OK if if they ask a ahead of time and B, you can kind of see the little screen, you know, that says it's a bot. Right. So it's not like people don't know.
Exactly. So, I mean, there are two types of these note takers. There are some where you see that little screen. And then, of course, you just kind of have that uncomfortable interaction. If people don't want them there, you have to. Say, whose notetaker is it? Can we kick them out?
What privacy risks do silent, background AI note‑takers create for participants?
All that kind of thing. So that adds a little bit of awkward complication. And then there's a whole generation of notetakers that run sort of silently in the background on a person's desktop and don't announce them. And in that case, it really is incumbent on people to you know, tell people that they're recording and ask for consent. And that is not just a matter of common courtesy. In a lot of states, that is the law. And so what I wrote about is really that there are legal and privacy issues, but also these sort of interpersonal power dynamics that are emerging. Because if I want my note taker there, because it makes my job easier, who are you to say it can't be there? But if, you know, if that is, in my opinion, violating my privacy, I might have something to say about that.
So it introduces these sort of new awkward dynamics in the workplace that didn't necessarily exist a couple of years ago.
Well, what kind of information would people be afraid could be exposed?
Why can AI‑generated transcripts expose sensitive information in board meetings?
Because if you're in a meeting, it's being aired to everybody.
Well, you know, you have to think about who's in the meeting. Right. So something like a board meeting. I mean. You don't want every single word of a closed session board meeting to be committed to the record and then have shareholders sometime later saying, oh, the board was discussing this and they did not disclose it to shareholders, yada, yada. And there are some horror stories out there about, you know, people who have turned on auto share on their note takers. So after the meeting, it auto shares the transcript with people who were never intended to be part of that meeting. There are also, you know, sort of more innocuous things. Everybody knows at the beginning of a Zoom, you might have a little bit of small talk.
Oh, I went to, you know, my daughter's graduation party and you talk a little bit about this and that. Well, when that gets then synthesized by an AI transcription and turned into a summary and shared around, you don't necessarily need all of your personal details out there.
How popular are AI note‑takers today and which companies dominate the market?
At the very least, it feels a little uncomfortable to have them delivered in a formal readout in that way.
Yeah, I guess I can see that that working. So How popular are these AI note takers these days?
They're incredibly popular. I mean, just one that I was looking at, Firefly's AI, I think last year announced that they had 20 million users. And that is just one of many.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What are AI note‑takers and why are they appearing in business meetings?
0:00–0:42
2
How do AI note‑takers work in Zoom calls and what consent issues arise?
0:42–1:29
3
What privacy risks do silent, background AI note‑takers create for participants?
1:29–2:22
4
Why can AI‑generated transcripts expose sensitive information in board meetings?
2:22–3:18
5
How popular are AI note‑takers today and which companies dominate the market?
3:18–3:56
6
What legal and power‑dynamic challenges do AI note‑takers raise for workplaces?
3:56–4:45
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from KCBS Bloomberg Tech and Business Report
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