Are AI meeting notetakers private?
Mostly, no — not in the sense people assume. Cloud notetakers (Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, tl;dv) upload, process, and store your meetings on their servers under their retention and security policies. A notetaker is private when the archive is not public by default, access is behind sign-in, and sharing is an explicit act. That is how Donna is built: Google login, a noindexed dashboard, revocable links, invited collaborators.
What happens to my meeting data on a cloud notetaker?
Your audio (often video) is uploaded to the vendor, transcribed on their compute, summarized by their AI stack — frequently involving further third-party AI providers — and stored under their retention policy. You hold an account; they hold the data. Vendors publish compliance pages (SOC 2, GDPR) that attest to how they protect that copy, but the copy exists, and it is subject to their breach surface, their subpoenas, and their policy changes.
How does Donna change the privacy answer?
It replaces “hope the vendor’s sharing matrix is right” with “you decide.” With Donna, the recording, transcript and report live in your private Flocci workspace. Flocci Speech Recognition transcribes audio chunks; Flocci Intelligence writes the report. The dashboard is behind Google sign-in. Sharing a read is a link you mint, a person you invite, or a file you export.
What should I check before trusting any notetaker?
Ask four questions. Where is the recording stored, and can I point to the machine? Who holds the AI provider relationships — me or a middleman? What is the retention policy, and who enforces it? And can a third party change these answers without my consent? A recap tool answers all four with “the vendor’s defaults.” Donna answers with Flocci as a named operator, your account as the lock, and sharing as a decision you make.
Related questions
Are meeting recordings used to train AI models?
Policies vary by vendor and plan tier, and they change — that is precisely the problem with holding your meetings in someone else’s cloud. Donna processes meetings to produce your transcript and report. We do not train models on your meetings.
Is a SOC 2 badge enough to call a notetaker private?
SOC 2 attests that the vendor protects the copy of your data it keeps. It does not remove the copy. Whether that is “private enough” depends on what is being discussed in your meetings — for boards, HR, negotiations, and client work, many teams conclude it is not.
Does private mean fully offline?
Not in Donna’s case: transcription and analysis are Flocci services, metered in credits. Fully offline pipelines exist (local speech models), trading convenience and quality for airgap. If airgap is a hard requirement, an open-source local tool such as Meetily is the honest pick.
Put Donna in your next meeting
Access is open — sign in with your Google account and she’s in your dashboard in minutes. Rolling out to a whole team, or want a hand with the server setup? We’re glad to help.