Nobody likes a know-it-all, as the saying goes, and some folks in the business world are learning this the hard way thanks to the new AI-enhanced capabilities of trusted work apps.
The Washington Post reported what happened after a routine Zoom call between researcher and engineer Alex Bilzerian and potential investors from a venture capital company.
He posted to X that the company used Otter AI to record the call — and “inadvertently … after the meeting, it automatically emailed me the transcript, including hours of their private conversations afterward, where they discussed intimate, confidential details about their business.”
The Post noted the transcript detailed how “the investors discussed their firm’s strategic failures and cooked metrics,” and although the unnamed company “profusely apologized … that post-meeting chatter made Bilzerian decide to kill the deal.”
And such costly mistakes are becoming more common, as companies are slow to learn just what quick-learning AI tech can do.
“AI can’t read the room like humans can, and many users don’t stop to check important settings or consider what could happen when automated tools access so much of their work lives,” the Post says.
In some cases — not Otter AI’s, the company insisted in reply to Bilzerian’s post — an AI transcription of a meeting can include the chatter from meeting members whose mics are muted.
Imagine the possibilities, and the potential lawsuits, from that sticky widget.
Experts prescribe that companies deploying all the latest AI bells and whistles get hip quick to all of an app’s privacy settings.