Big Brother breathed on my neck yesterday, and I confess it gave me a serious case of the willies. There’s some movie stuff going on that can can’t discuss in detail yet, but it all looks very promising. Extended email exchanges last week culminated in a 4-person Zoom call yesterday afternoon (for me, morning for the other three) that was essentially an opportunity for us all to get to know each other and share some creative ideas.
I’m old school about timeliness (on time is five minutes too late), so at 12:55 I follow the Zoom link and I wait in the virtual waiting room until our host, Cory, opens the meeting. At the top of the hour, the screen blinks, and there’s the Brady Bunch Zoom screen with my face, plus three others from the production team. As we’re about to say hello, a fifth window opens, announcing itself to be me and saying, “Recording.”
“Whoa,” I said. “What’s that?”
“It says it’s you, so I let it in,” Cory said. “I figured you wanted to record the conversation.”
“I don’t mind if you want to record,” said Josh, the director. “I’ve never done that, but I don’t mind.”
“It’s not me,” I said. “I have no idea where it came from. Can you dump it from the meeting?”
“Maybe it’s the Russians,” Adrian, the producer, joked.
After some more cross-talk, Cory found the dump button, and the intruder was excluded from the call. The meeting went well.
That would be creepy enough. But then, I found this in my email, sent to me by Otter.AI:
During a Zoom call, Cory XXX and others discuss an unexpected recording request, initially thought to be from John. There is concern about the presence of Russian hackers and the privacy implications of the recording. Cory suggests exiting and rejoining the meeting to address these concerns. Despite the unease, they decide to proceed, as there are no significant secrets to protect. Cory then instructs to remove an AI note-taker associated with John from the meeting, indicating a preference for transparency and control over the recording process.
But that’s not all. The email goes on to present a more detailed summary of the part of the discussion it listened to, and then there’s a link to the actual recording.
Has anyone else experienced the uninvited arrival of AI bots in their business lives? At least this one had the decency to announce itself before recording, but when I put on my thriller writer hat, it’s easy to see a world where that won’t be necessary.
The creepiest part of it all isn’t the recording, actually. It’s the narrative summary of the recording that freaks me out. Now I have to figure out how to make sure that Otter.AI doesn’t bother me again.
I had a similar situation come up where I was virtually meeting with several people & out of the 3-4 of us leading the group, I thought one of the other leaders had hit record at beginning of session but it wasn’t them but a participant. I had to get tech help to figure out how to change my meeting settings to prevent unwanted recordings.
I find AI very creepy and it’s yet another chore I must do–becoming more knowledgable about this AI junk to avoid such issues. Far too intrusive in our lives. I’m all for advances in technology, but only when done with caution. But I don’t see caution on the part of society with this stuff. It’s just people running towards it, arms outstretched with a “Look! Shiny new toy!” approach. I’m not seeing sufficient attention to caution whatsoever.
I’ll be very curious to hear the takes of other commenters on this discussion.
Wow, John. That is creepy. Never heard of it before, but I haven’t Zoomed in a while. So, even though the host kicked the AI off the call, it still listened and recorded?
I am so angry about this kind of stuff, as it’s showing up every time I open my phone or iPad. My concern is the fact that AI isn’t its own entity out there mindlessly inserting itself into our lives against our will. It’s the people behind it and what they are doing, or planning to do, with the information that scares me. This is why my main writing computer is offline. I know it sounds paranoid, but I used to keep the computer camera covered at work. It was too creepy when someone across the country could not only manipulate my screen, but see my keyboard strokes and my face. And that was years ago.
I imagine a story is popping into your head…
One more reason why I detest AI.
John, in the name of convenience and so-called security, we surrendered our privacy years ago. I wrote about an early iteration of such intrusion in this 2019 post: https://killzoneblog.com/2019/01/surveillance-by-keystrokes-giving-permission-to-snoop.html
At that point, it was only keystrokes. Now it’s every word we say, conveniently monitored by our phones and other devices.
As Becky says, the billionaires behind AI have the power to manipulate, control, and determine our lives in ways we’re only barely aware of…until it’s too late to stop it.
Has anyone else noticed the big Kahunas have recently been changing terms and conditions and require us to approve them or we can no longer use the site? Hidden somewhere in those 475 screens of fine print and 14 dozen links to additional terms are permissions that will come back to bite us in the butt.
John, thanks for sharing this additional means of covert surveillance. Our aluminum foil hats can no longer protect us.
Great timing Mr. G!
In real life I am the head IT Guy. About a month ago Microsoft Teams stopped allowing recording of meetings. We use Teams to teach classes for online students. Every lecture gets recorded and attached to the class.
I can’t figure out how to bring back the recording controls. I found them yesterday. You need to turn on Microsoft AI to allow recording. Every meeting recorded is being fed into AI to “teach” it.
Teams also has a meeting attendee that takes notes and provides near real time transcriptions. Handy or creepy depending on your point of view.
With Microsoft requiring AI on to record meetings. If your Microsoft licensing is for national security or has a security clearance with it, You cannot turn on AI. You need to contact Microsoft about recording meetings.
Thanks for bringing this up, John. I attend Zoom meetings at least once a week.
My daughter, who lives in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, owns her own business and regularly meets with her associates over Zoom. She told me that recently, about 5 minutes into the Zoom call with folks from all over the US, the meeting was suddenly interrupted by a series of pornographic pictures moving across their screens and a voice shouting obscenities. They had to suspend the meeting and restart later, which went off without a hitch.
Ugh…what a world! 🙁
“Zoom Bombing” is fairly common. There are security settings you can use to help prevent that.
Too true to life, John. It’s our “Open the door, Dave…” moment. We warned folks about the equivalent of HAL 9000, but they ignored us. We complained to companies, and they changed their terms. Now it’s everywhere, including our oh-so-smart TVs conveying every word back to the nebulous cloud. Even the medical clinics jumped in, and even though theoretically limited by HIPAA, they changed terms and invited AI to sit next to your doctor, recording images and sound as the MD pokes and prods. Time to unplug?
This is seriously creepy and whoever OttterAI is they’ve got a lot of nerve. How do they just barge into a zoom meeting, impersonate somebody and record the thing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YvAYIJSSZY
This is supremely creepy and unsettling. I haven’t experienced this in a Zoom call (yet) but I have experienced the “A.I. summary” bots on social media, Amazon and Google. These summaries are no replacement for reading a comment or a review. I’ve heard some companies are using these with emails. What’s the point of writing an email if it’s only going to get summarized and never read in its entirety?
Creepy indeed! It’s bad enough that we’re being recorded. But to have AI summarize what’s been said is ridiculous. I recently signed up for a book promotion for one of my novels, and the site offered to have AI create a summary of the book. I gave it a try, and the results were hilariously ridiculous. AI confused the heroine with the victim. Had to cancel the whole thing and start again.
I have at least one Zoom meeting a week. One of them is a Bible study. I wonder if AI would learn anything there. 🙂
Back in ancient times when I was in college and phones plugged into walls, I was at a literary writer’s conference. One of the speaker was a famous poet who told a story of her divorce from a jealous man. He was certain she was cheating so he hired a PI to bug her phone. It was obviously bugged, but she went on with her life as usual. One of her calls was to a male friend, a fellow poet and possible lover. They spent two hours discussing comma placement in several poems. That poor PI earned his money that day.
🙂
Sooner or later, a government will turn decisions over to AI software. The result will be a disaster beyond our wildest imagination.