The Zoom hack that says, ‘Don’t record me’

VC Jeremy Levine has a bitter solution for something that routinely irritates him, according to a new one Article in the Wall Street Journal about the rise of AI transcription apps. On Zoom, he is no longer “Jeremy Levine,” but instead “Jeremy Levine, I do not consent to be transcribed or recorded.”

It may sound petty or brilliant depending on your point of view, but what’s clear is that “always on” recording is becoming ubiquitous, thanks to a growing number of AI note-taking apps and devices, many of which we’ve reviewed here on TechCrunch (we’ve even ranked some).

VC Eric Bahn tells the outlet that he now automatically assumes his meetings with founders will be recorded, even before he sees a phone slide across a conference table. One founder tells the WSJ that she records most of her first dates with the Granola app and then passes the transcript to Claude to see if she can be “more engaging or empathetic,” while also assessing who has done most of the talking. (Dating in San Francisco is rough.)

Levine calls the entire trend “socially unacceptable behavior” that can completely destroy spontaneous conversations. Others in the piece note that it is a legal minefield.

But there’s another problem: If every meeting, water cooler conversation, and romantic outing is transcribed and summarized, who will actually read any of it? At what point does this audio dump of every conversation stop being useful and just become a recording that no one has time to play?