AI is spying on your workplace gossip and secrets and sharing them afterward

AI is all ears.Innovative office tech that utilizes artificial intelligence is listening in on your conversations and runs the risk of leaking company secrets and workplace gossip, turning the tool into a dangerous nuisance.Alex Bilzerian, a researcher and engineer, recently took to X to explain how Otter AI, a platform he used to transcribe a Zoom meeting with a venture capitalist firm, accidentally spilled a confidential conversation.After the meeting ended, Bilzerian received an email of the call’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 deal with their firm, he told The Washington Post.It might be a “reasonable assumption” to think the AI assistants could detect when participants exit a meeting and not send the rest of the transcript, but Hatim Rahman, an associate professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, told The Washington Post that the tech is not always accurate.Otter AI responded to Bilzerian’s X post to reiterate the company’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 can change, update, or stop the sharing permissions of a conversation anytime,” the company wrote.

“For this specific instance, users have the option not to share transcripts automatically with anyone or to auto-share conversations only with users who share the same Workspace domain.”Meanwhile, OtterPilot, the AI assistant that records and transcribes meetings, only captures the audio from the call...