Don’t allow Fred in your meetings!

Who is Fred?

Fred is the user-friendly name of one of the AI-powered meeting assistants. The tool (*) is simple to use and very efficient at what it does. Once Fred joins your meeting as a participant, he (it?) is actively listening, taking notes, jotting down the action, and even assessing the temperature at the meeting (positive, neutral, negative). When the meeting ends, Fred will send out the notes and summary... and claim the license for everything said or presented!

How come? Have you ever scrolled down the Terms and Conditions of service and accepted them without reading them? Well, that is how.

Terms of Service? Ain't Nobody Got Time for That!

When you look into the Terms of Service of most of the tools in the meeting assistants domain, you will find that by using the tool, you do grant the license right to the tool creator.

An example (**) Terms of Service would be:

“By providing User Content, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully paid, perpetual right and license (with the right to sublicense) to host, store, transfer, display, reproduce, modify for the purpose of formatting for display, and distribute your User Content to provide and improve the Service.”

Some Terms of Service are less strict, some more – but in general, the creators of AI-powered meeting assistant solutions tend to think that for the service to run, you need to grant them a license to your content “to provide and ensure proper operation of the Services and associated systems” (a quote from yet another example).

The question if this is necessary is not to be discussed here. I will leave it to the lawyers. Let me note that you will not find similar license clauses in – for example – Google Workplace, on which the company can process much more information via AI-powered meeting assistant.

The problem with the tool facilitating Fred the Bot is that they go well beyond the “usual industry standard”. Apart from the license to use, access, view, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, etc., the users also agree to the following:?

• sell,?
• publicly display or perform,?
• ... and “otherwise exploit” (quote!) User Content

A full paragraph is:

"By making available any User Content through the Services, you hereby grant to […] a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, access, view, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast and otherwise exploit such User Content on, through or by means of the Services."

The “User Content” mentioned above is defined as:

“Any content, information, and materials that may be textual, audio, or visual that you provide, submit, upload, publish, or make otherwise available to the Services and other users.”

Generally speaking - everything said or presented during the meeting.

Will they ever exploit the license rights on your material? I don’t think so. What is the purpose of having such clauses in the Terms and Conditions? I don’t know.

Lessons (to be) learned

1. There is massive hype on anything related to AI right now. Every day, a dozen or so new lists of AI-powered tools are published on LinkedIn. Please don't use AI without consideration or even a basic understanding of how AI works.
2. If you decide to use an AI-powered meeting assistant solution, read the Terms and Conditions and ask yourself if you are ok with them.
3. If you use an AI-powered meeting assistant solution outside of your organization, ask yourself if your customers, clients, prospects, regulators, etc. – everyone you meet with – are ok with the Terms and Conditions of the tool.
4. Your Security and Compliance team probably has the procedure of performing due diligence on any new tool or solution before its approval for production use. Don’t be the one who bypasses it, especially if you are a leader and you are the one setting the tone.

Conclusions

This article focuses only on the small portion of legal challenges coming into light with the rise of AI. Your Security and Compliance (and most likely – Legal) teams must answer many more questions. What’s your take on AI-powered tools?

Footnotes:

(*) I will not disclose the name of the tool. Please do your due diligence homework. Or ask your Security and Compliance team to do their job. Anyway, it is easy to track down if you want to.

(**) I will also not promote or advises on the tools I see as “acceptable” from the risk perspective. Again – please do your due diligence homework.