AI is all ears.
Modern office tech that utilizes artificial intelligence is listening in in your conversations and runs the danger of leaking company secrets and workplace gossip, turning the tool right into a dangerous nuisance.
Alex Bilzerian, a researcher and engineer, recently took to X to clarify how Otter AI, a platform he used to transcribe a Zoom meeting with a enterprise capitalist firm, by chance spilled a confidential conversation.
After the meeting ended, Bilzerian received an email of the decision’s transcript — and realized the smart assistant had continued to record the conversation even after Bilzerian had logged off. The transcript, he said, included “hours of their [the investors from the venture capital firm] private conversations afterward, where they discussed intimate, confidential details about their business.”
While the investors “profusely apologized,” Bilzerian still decided to stop the take care of their firm, he told The Washington Post.
It is likely to be a “reasonable assumption” to think the AI assistants could detect when participants exit a gathering and never send the remainder of the transcript, but Hatim Rahman, an associate professor on the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, told The Washington Post that the tech is just not at all times accurate.
Otter AI responded to Bilzerian’s X post to reiterate the corporate’s commitment to user privacy, explaining that they “understand the concerns” and “are committed to keeping your information private and secure.”
“Users have full control over conversation sharing permissions and might change, update, or stop the sharing permissions of a conversation anytime,” the corporate wrote.
“For this specific instance, users have the choice to not share transcripts routinely with anyone or to auto-share conversations only with users who share the identical Workspace domain.”
Meanwhile, OtterPilot, the AI assistant that records and transcribes meetings, only captures the audio from the decision, so it can not record anything said by a muted participant.
People on the decision will even receive a notification that the meeting is being recorded and the virtual assistant will appear as a gathering attendee, in response to The Washington Post.
The corporate may also collect screenshots of meetings — including text or other media uploaded by participants — which may be shared with third parties that support or advertise with Otter or law enforcement in some cases.
Rob Bezdijan, the owner of a Salt Lake City events business, once lost a deal opportunity because he refused to permit the potential investors to record the meeting on Otter, telling The Washington Post he was wary of allowing his business ideas to be recorded and omitted certain details because of this.
“I feel it’s an enormous issue since the technology is proliferating so fast, and folks haven’t really internalized how invasive it’s,” researcher and privacy advocate Naomi Brockwell told the outlet.
Brockwell warned that AI increases the danger of leaked company secrets and opens up the opportunity of lawsuits.
Will Andre, a cybersecurity consultant, cautioned against uninformed, widespread use of AI tools across corporations, telling The Washington Post that in his former marketing role he got here across a recording on the corporate’s public servers containing footage of his bosses discussing layoffs.
“There needs to be awareness from corporations that individuals of various ages and tech abilities are going to be using these products,” Rahman added.
AI-powered software and devices have been under harsh scrutiny currently, as more corporations integrate the tech into their products.
Apple created Apple Intelligence, while Google recently launched Gemini. The usage of artificial intelligence on social media platforms has also incited anger amongst users of platforms like Meta, which trains Meta AI using publicly available user data.
