Beware this terrible new AI email feature

A friend of mine got a nasty shock last week after a Google Meet call, thanks to a new AI function that he was unaware of. On this occasion, the consequences were quite funny, but on another day his failure to get his head around this new technology could have ended his career.

Had the AI continued to transcribe the call after the other two had left – and sent it to them?

We’re all familiar with the poor sod who hits ‘reply all’ when responding to an email and accidentally copies in precisely the person whom he doesn’t want to read it. I’ve done it myself. I’ve also heard horror stories about people inadvertently switching their cameras on in the middle of a Zoom call when they’re on the loo or in their underpants – not something I’ve ever done, thank God. And in 2022 the Free Speech Union defended a railway conductor who was sacked after he failed to disconnect at the end of a teleconference on ‘white privilege’ and was overheard by the instructor saying to his wife: ‘You know what I really wanted to ask? And I wish I had. Do they have black privilege in other countries? So if you’re in Ghana…’

But this latest incident takes the biscuit. My friend – let’s call him Harry – was on a Meet work call in which he and his colleagues were pitching to the gay CEO of a large company and his high-energy female number two, hoping to persuade them to sign up to a multimillion-pound contract. At the conclusion of the call, after the two had left, Harry decided to engage in a bit of post-match analysis. ‘From now on I think we’re going to have to call those two Pinky and Perky,’ he told his workmates.

After he’d ended the call, an email popped into his inbox marked ‘transcript’. He opened it and was surprised to find it was a verbatim transcript of the half-hour meeting. Unbeknownst to him, he’d activated – or failed to de-activate – some new feature in Meet whereby the call is transcribed by an AI and the transcript emailed to the participants. OK, he thought. Not a disaster. The pitch had gone quite well and it wouldn’t hurt his cause if the two potential clients read it back.

Then he was gripped by a terrible fear. Had the AI continued to transcribe the call after the other two had left? He scrolled to the bottom of the email and, sure enough, there it was: a verbatim transcript of his Pinky and Perky comment. Because he’d been the organiser of the Meet meeting, the AI hadn’t clocked off until he’d disconnected. He checked the ‘cc’ field and, with a sinking heart, confirmed that the CEO and his second-in-command had been sent it along with everyone else.

A debate then ensued between him and his colleagues about whether to send a follow-up email to Pinky and Perky to apologise. There was a decent chance they wouldn’t read the transcript all the way through as it was several thousand words long. Indeed, they might not read it at all, given that they were busy people and had probably made up their minds about who to award the contract to. Even if they did read the entire thing, would they get the reference? Pinky and Perky made their first television appearance in 1957 and disappeared from the airwaves in 1971. Admittedly, they made guest appearances from time to time and there was a short-lived attempt to revive the original show in 2008, but surely only those aged 55 and over would know they were a pair of anthropomorphic puppet pigs. Then again, the name ‘Pinky’ is pretty obviously a reference to the CEO’s sexual orientation and, while not overtly homophobic, it’s not exactly PC.

In the end, they decided it would be better not to draw attention to Harry’s gaffe, which I’m sure was the right decision. So far, they haven’t heard back from the dynamic duo, which probably means they aren’t going to get the contract and they’ll never know whether that was because of Harry’s comment. There’s a risk that one of his colleagues will dob him in to HR, but all of them are over 40 and have a sense of humour so he’s not too worried. In addition, they’re probably thinking: ‘There but for the grace of God…’

That was certainly my first thought when Harry told me his story. I often joke about people with my colleagues the moment their back is turned, and the idea that my remarks might be faithfully transcribed by an AI and then emailed to them is terrifying. So I’m grateful to my friend for alerting me to this new bear trap and thought I’d better pass on the warning. Next time you’re on a Meet call, don’t say anything you don’t want to be shared with everyone else on that call until you’ve disconnected. Big Brother is listening.