The 30 second story
You know when you share a Google Doc and accidentally set it to “anyone with the link can view” instead of keeping it private? Granola, an AI-powered meeting note app, does this by default with every note you create. The company says your notes are “private by default” but makes them viewable to anyone who gets hold of the link. Granola also uses your meeting notes to train its AI unless you manually opt out. The app, which records meetings and creates bullet-point summaries, is available in the UK but the company has not disclosed pricing details.
Why it matters
Your meeting notes contain sensitive business information that competitors, suppliers, or anyone else should not see. When an app makes these notes accessible to anyone with a link, one wrong click or shared message exposes everything. This matters more with AI note-taking tools because they encourage you to capture more meetings and more detail than you might write by hand. The automation that makes these tools useful also makes privacy breaches more damaging since you end up with a larger collection of sensitive business conversations in one place.
Be transparent about it
Tell meeting participants that you are using Granola to record and generate notes. Explain that the app creates shareable links and uses the content for AI training unless you change the settings. Offer to share the generated notes with participants so they know what was captured. Recording meetings and processing personal data without consent can breach UK data protection rules, and transparency builds trust with clients and colleagues.
What this means for your business
- Meeting notes from AI tools can leak business information if you do not check privacy settings before each use
- Apps that train AI on your data by default turn your sensitive business conversations into training material for tools your competitors might also use
- The convenience of automated note-taking comes with higher stakes when privacy settings are wrong since these tools capture more meetings than manual note-taking
- Any AI tool that creates shareable links needs active privacy management rather than assuming the defaults protect your business