Recording responsibly

Autopen turns the meetings you take part in into transcripts and notes. Capturing a conversation is something the law cares about, and the people in your meetings deserve to know. This guide explains who is responsible, how consent rules differ by place, wording you can use to tell people, and what to do if someone says no.

You are responsible for consent

When you use Autopen, you decide whether a meeting may be captured, and you are the one who tells the other participants. The Terms of Use put it plainly: you are solely responsible for deciding whether a meeting may lawfully and contractually be recorded, transcribed, and processed through cloud providers, and for giving any notices and getting any consents that apply.

A few rules follow from that:

• You may use Autopen only for meetings and conversations you take part in. Do not use it to capture a conversation you are not part of, including by leaving a device recording after you leave.
• Transcribing a conversation counts as recording it. Many laws apply to capturing a conversation even though no audio file is kept after transcription.
• A reminder or indicator in Autopen is not legal advice and does not establish that consent is sufficient.
• If a participant objects, or recording is not allowed, stop.

The simple habit: tell everyone, every time

Asking everyone at the start is the simplest habit, though some places and situations require more. It costs a few seconds, and it means nobody learns later that they were transcribed without being told.

Tell people before you start, not after. If someone joins late, tell them when they join. If a meeting moves from one topic to a sensitive one (a personnel matter, a client's health, a legal dispute), check again.

How to tell participants

Use whichever fits the meeting. You can edit any of these; keep the plain facts in them.

Say it at the start.

"Before we begin: I'm using Autopen to transcribe this meeting and take notes. Autopen and its cloud providers process the meeting, and the transcript and notes are stored in my Autopen account. Is everyone okay with that? If you'd rather I didn't, say so and I won't use it."

Tell people, and get any agreement you need, before you start a recording, not once Autopen is already running. Wait for a yes from each person when you are in, or meeting with someone in, a place in the table marked all-party or uncertain.

Put it in the calendar invite.

"Note-taking: I use Autopen to transcribe and summarize our meetings. Autopen and its cloud providers process the meeting, and the transcript and notes are stored in my Autopen account. It starts only when I start it, and I'll mention it before I start. If you'd prefer I not use it, reply to this invite or tell me when we start, and I won't."

Paste it into the meeting chat.

"Heads up: I'm using Autopen to transcribe this call and take notes. Autopen and its cloud providers process the meeting, and the transcript and notes are stored in my Autopen account. Tell me before we start if you'd rather I didn't, and I'll stop."

Autopen does not post this for you. You copy it and send it yourself, as yourself.

Recurring meetings. For a standing meeting with the same people, telling them once and repeating it in the invite is a reasonable practice; tell anyone new each time they join, and ask again if anyone's situation changes.

Consent rules by place

Laws on recording conversations fall into two broad groups.

• One-party consent: a person taking part in a conversation may generally record it without the others agreeing. You count as the one party, so long as you are actually in the conversation.
• All-party consent: everyone in the conversation generally has to agree before it is recorded. Some of these laws apply only to conversations people reasonably expect to be private, and some treat phone calls differently from in-person meetings.

Three things matter more than the label:

1. Where the other people are. On a call or video meeting, the participants' locations matter, not only yours. When people are in different states or countries, the stricter rule is often the one that applies. A one-party state does not settle a call with someone in an all-party state.
2. Speaker identification. Illinois and some other places have biometric privacy laws. Autopen keeps no voiceprint or speaker embedding. To tell speakers apart, our speech-to-text provider computes temporary speaker embeddings for each recording; Autopen stores only the speaker labels in the transcript, any names you type for them, and a count of speakers. In some places, telling people that the meeting is transcribed with speakers told apart may need extra notice or consent.
3. Other rules on top. Employment law, professional rules, confidentiality agreements, and your organization's policy can restrict recording even where the recording law allows it.

The table below shows how each state's rule is commonly described in public summaries. It is a starting point, not a ruling on your meeting. Where summaries disagree or the rule depends on the situation, the row says "Uncertain" and tells you how to treat it. Federal law in the United States is commonly described as one-party for a person taking part in the conversation, but a state's stricter rule can still apply.

United States

This table is general guidance, not legal advice; rules change, and when in doubt tell everyone and get their agreement before you record.

Outside the United States

What Autopen does and does not do

• Autopen starts capturing only when you start it. Nothing starts from a calendar entry or when a call begins.
• Autopen does not join meetings as a participant, add a bot, or post into meeting platforms on your behalf. Autopen never joins a call as a bot and never posts into the meeting. Participants will not see any notice from Autopen; telling them is your responsibility.
• On Windows, if you leave call detection turned on, Autopen can notice a supported Teams, Zoom, Webex, or Google Meet call and offer to start. Capture still begins only when you choose it.
• Transcription and notes happen in the cloud. Meeting audio is sent to our speech-to-text provider, AssemblyAI, and the transcript is sent to our note-generation provider, OpenAI. The Privacy Policy lists every provider and what each one receives.
• Audio is encrypted on the device and in processing storage, used only to transcribe, and deleted when the transcript is final. If an upload fails or a retry stalls, our servers can hold it up to 24 hours (up to 24 hours plus the maximum recording length for a recording that finishes uploading on its own after you stop), and the device can keep a recovery copy for 7 days, after which Autopen removes it the next time it cleans up.
• Transcripts and notes stay in your account until you delete them. A deleted meeting goes to Trash for 14 days before it is permanently deleted, unless you permanently delete it sooner. A managed organization may set different retention.
• Autopen does not use Customer Content to train an Autopen model, or for model evaluation or benchmarking. No one at Autopen reads your transcripts or notes unless you choose to share a specific meeting with support.

Client meetings, advisors, and the workplace

Many people use Autopen for meetings with clients. Those meetings carry duties beyond recording law.

• Your firm's policy comes first. If you work at an investment adviser, broker-dealer, bank, insurer, or another regulated firm, your compliance team may decide which tools can capture client conversations, whether notes and transcripts count as business records, and how long they must be kept. Check before you use Autopen for client meetings. Autopen is an early cloud service and is not approved for regulated workloads, so do not rely on it as the sole record of a client conversation; keep the records your firm requires in your firm's own systems.
• Tell clients, every time. Clients expect confidentiality. Tell them at the start of each meeting that you are using Autopen for notes, and offer to take notes by hand instead. For a client you meet often, put it in your standing invite as well.
• Confidential and inside information. Confidentiality agreements, engagement letters, and rules about material non-public information can limit what may be recorded or sent to a cloud service. When a meeting will cover that kind of material and you are not sure it may be captured, do not start Autopen.
• Check the notes. Transcripts and generated notes can omit, misattribute, misunderstand, or invent information. Review them before you send them to a client, put them in a file, or act on them.
• Colleagues. Internal meetings need the same notice. Your employer may have its own rules on recording colleagues, and some places give employees specific rights. If your organization manages your Autopen account, it may ask you to confirm that participants were told before each meeting.

If someone objects

Stop. Do not argue, and do not keep capturing while you discuss it.

1. Stop capture in Autopen right away.
2. Offer to take notes by hand, or to meet without any notes being taken.
3. If anything was already captured, delete that meeting in Autopen once it appears in your meetings list, then permanently delete it from Trash so it does not wait the 14 days.
4. Tell the person what you did, honestly: the meeting was deleted from your Autopen account. Permanent deletion removes it from active systems; backup copies and provider records expire on their own schedule, as the Privacy Policy explains.

On iPhone, discarding while capture is running removes the recording from that device, but audio that had already been uploaded can still finish processing. Delete the meeting afterwards to remove what reached the cloud.

If you were in someone else's meeting

If you took part in a meeting someone captured with Autopen and want to ask about it or have it deleted, see what you can do. We pass the request to the account holder and reply within 30 days. The Privacy Policy explains how Autopen treats other people in your meetings.

About this guide

We wrote this guide with our own best judgement and review it as laws and the product change; the date at the top shows the last review. It is general information, not legal advice, and it cannot tell you whether a particular meeting may be recorded. The Terms of Use and Privacy Policy govern your use of Autopen. When a situation is unclear, ask everyone, or don't capture.

Autopen is operated by Quiet Eye Advisors LLC, 228 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003. The Terms of Use are governed by New York law; that does not change which recording laws apply to your meeting, which depend on where you and the other participants are.

Questions about recording and consent: info@quieteyegroup.com (mailto subject "Autopen recording question").