According to a new Wall Street Journal article on the rise of AI transcription apps, venture capitalist Jeremy Levine has a sarcastic solution to everyday frustrations. On Zoom, he is no longer “Jeremy Levine” but instead reads “Jeremy Levine does not consent to transcription or recording.”
This may sound trivial or great depending on your point of view, but what’s clear is that constant recording is becoming ubiquitous, thanks to the ever-increasing number of AI note-taking apps and devices. We’ve covered many of them on TechCrunch (and even ranked some of them).
Venture capitalist Eric Byrne told the outlet that he automatically assumed meetings with founders would be recorded before he saw the phone slide across the conference table. One founder told WSJ that he recorded most of his first date on the Granola app and then sent the recording to Claude to gauge who did most of the talking while seeing if he could be more “charming or empathetic.” (Dating in San Francisco is tough.)
Levine calls this entire trend “socially unacceptable behavior” that can completely ruin a spontaneous conversation. Others in this article have pointed out that it’s a legal minefield.
But there’s another wrinkle. If every meeting, water cooler conversation, and romantic outing is all transcribed and summarized, who is actually reading it? At what point does this audio filler of every conversation become useless and become just another recording that no one has time to play?
