AI for meetings: transcription without leaking sensitive data

An AI meeting tool listens, transcribes, and summarises. You avoid taking notes and can be present in the conversation. The benefit is large. But a meeting can contain everything from personal data to trade secrets, so this is a category where where the data ends up matters extra.

How they work

Most tools do three things: record the audio, convert speech to text, and create a summary with action points. Some send a “bot” into the meeting; others record locally on your computer.

Data protection is the whole point here

Before choosing, consider:

• What is said in meetings? Customer matters, health, personnel issues? The more sensitive, the more important with EU storage.
• Where is audio processed? Transcription often happens in the cloud, not infrequently in the USA.
• Are participants informed that the meeting is recorded? They should be.
• Is raw audio saved? Some delete it immediately after transcription, which reduces risk.

The safer choices

• Klang: Swedish, built for the Swedish language and with EU data storage. First choice if conversations are sensitive.
• tl;dv: German (EU), good free tier.
• Jamie: German, records locally without meeting bot and deletes raw audio after transcription.

The common, but American ones

Fireflies and Otter are popular and feature-rich, but American: EU storage is usually only on Enterprise, and Swedish transcripts are weaker. Happy Scribe (Irish) is a good-value middle ground with EU data centres.

How to choose

Sensitive meetings in Swedish → start with Klang. Everyday internal meetings → tl;dv or Jamie are good enough. Need deep integration with Zoom/Teams and can keep sensitive matters out → then an American tool can work, if you read up on data storage first.

Whichever tool you land on: tell the participants the meeting is being recorded, and let the raw audio live as briefly as possible.