Many Hybridge clients have requested that we enable one or more Zoom / Video AI transcription services for them. On the surface this seems like a useful capability, attendees can multitask through or even skip meetings and have a written summary to read after the fact. Transcription is also useful if you need to find a particular discussion inside a meeting because text can be searched through much more easily than video.
However, to transcribe your meeting, the AI needs to have access to your meeting, or your meeting recordings. Like any 3rd party application access, this is a security risk. Providing access to any of your systems means you must trust the security of the 3rd party app, the 3rd party company themselves (that they won’t be hacked), and the integrity of all employees of the 3rd party company (that they won’t browse through your data). This is a big risk, so you need to be sure that the business-benefit merits taking this risk, and that you (or Hybridge) do due diligence to the third party before granting access.
Privacy varies widely between AI Transcription providers. After an outcry, Zoom changed their AI Companion terms of service to keep your meeting data confidential, instead of their initial approach of taking full ownership of your meeting content. Fireflies.AI does not share your data, but anyone authorized in your company can search and read any meeting transcript, whether they were in the meeting or not. Otter AI does admit that they use your data to train their AI, though they say they “de-identify” user data first (hopefully not using the same AI they are training…). Of course, it is also uncertain how much a given application provider truly understands and can control their AI.
The major risk of transcription common to all AI Transcription services is that of misinterpretation. Accurately capturing the full meaning of humans in a video call is exceptionally hard no matter how “smart” or well-meaning the AI is. Every LLM AI reflects the training and biases of its human reinforcement trainers and its subsequent learning. Remember that Stalin gained leadership of the Soviet Union from his role as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a minor (non-cabinet) role in which he transcribed and summarized all leadership meetings ...
Like all technology, there are pros and cons to having AIs listen to and analyze your meetings, chats, phone calls, and whiteboards. Hybridge can help you balance the benefits and risks of this and any other technology.
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