You Are Being Recorded

The other day I was a little late to a group call. Because of this, I didn't realize until someone posted the transcript in Slack (also known as a searchable log of call communication and knowledge) that someone had turned on their AI notetaker before I arrived, even though we'd previously discussed some people in the group—including me—not feeling comfortable with transcripts or recordings.

(In this post I'm using the term recording to refer to both video/audio recordings and transcriptions because I view transcriptions as a type of recording. In many ways, they're actually a more invasive record because they're indexed, searchable, and far easier for an LLM to digest than a raw audio file.)

Sometimes AI bots join meetings as ghost participants, like Jane Doe's Otter.ai. Although it adds to the eerie feeling of an uninvited guest at the table, at least you know the ghost is there. But this isn’t just about consent. It’s about how always-on recordings change behavior and relationships.

It may be odd that I don't always like to be recorded since I record other people for a living. But I ask them if it's okay before I do that, and let them know how the recording will be used--my own notes, stored locally. I'll let them know if there is a retention period. I'll explicitly say "I'm recording" when I turn the audio recorder on. If they ask to go off the record, and I agree, I will physically turn off the recording device so that there is literally no record of what we (may or may not have) discussed.

Lately I've been doing a lot of podcasts. They don't come naturally to me. I cut my teeth in print media, where it's not ideal but more or less okay if I stumble over my words. I can carefully look up facts and figures before writing anything incorrectly.

I cringe when I hear some of the podcasts I'm a guest on because I will slightly misspeak, forget a key fact or use the wrong word or phrase. I can't count on both hands the number of times a podcast host told me they would edit something out and then I would hear it in the final conversation.

I think it's okay to make mistakes in audio; it's what people in real life sound like. In that medium, the conversation is more important than factual perfection. But it does require a lot of forethought and preparation. We act differently when we are being recorded. And even when we do this, it is difficult to avoid misspeaking, or saying something we might regret were it to float around forever.

It isn't just that podcasts and videos are skills that need to be worked on, it's that they are essentially a performance. AI notetakers force us to perform during what might otherwise be more casual work calls. The calls become semi-public artifacts; the conversation becomes a documented performance.

It's not just that I was on a call that was being transcribed without my knowledge or consent, though I do find that irritating. It's also that it seems to be the norm now. In the past few weeks, I've been on at least five calls that were transcribed and summarized by an AI notetaker. I was never explicitly asked whether I was okay with this, and even if I had been, there is a social pressure not to object, especially when the tools are on by default.

On a call this past week I told someone a story from my past that I now realize has been transcribed and uploaded and will live in a document forever. I trust the person I met with, which is why I shared the story in the first place. I can even say I trust their digital hygiene and think it's unlikely that this will ever be hacked or leaked. But I still don't like the idea of it floating around in an LLM training set or a company server. Now that I've had this experience, I believe I'll be more hesitant to share as much in the future.

An always-on record can create distance. In trying to preserve conversations, we make them harder to have. Is it worth preserving a shared history if it costs us the conversations themselves?

Sometimes it is good to keep strict track of everything someone says, like when you are documenting something for human resources or for a lawsuit. But I'd like to think that most of my casual meetings are not adversarial. By default, if I set up meetings on other people's calendar links, they get the notes and transcripts and I do not. I have always requested them and been granted immediate access. But I feel like if we're going to have a shared, living document—especially one I'm only implicitly agreeing to out—it should be shared with me immediately even if I'm not a part of someone else's organization.

Beyond having to ask for copies of a transcript of a shared conversation that others receive by default, another part of this that feels only quasi-consensual is that none of my transcribed conversations have been ones that I've been paid for. Stringing together freelance or contract work can often take many meetings, in part to determine the scope of a project or if it even makes sense to work together in the first place. Recorded or transcribed meetings seem like the kind of trade-off a person might make for work they're being paid for, ideally with benefits.

It might seem flattering for others to want a record of my thoughts, or it would be if it wasn't the default. But I think we need to recognize the tradeoff. For me, knowing that there will be semi-public artifacts of every word I've said will make me much more trepidatious about those words. And I think we need to put some thought into whether that trade-off is worth it.

Is there a reason we're not asking before recording or transcribing? Is there a reason we're not giving our colleagues the same level of access we have? Is there a reason we don't have a retention policy or aren't sharing it when we do?

In my ideal world, these would be explicit norms, not afterthoughts.

Have you changed the way you speak in meetings since the bots arrived?