{"id":117714,"date":"2026-07-24T12:24:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/117714\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T12:24:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:24:27","slug":"opinion-of-the-week-beware-of-ai-notetakers-threat-to-confidentiality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/117714\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION OF THE WEEK: Beware Of AI Notetakers’ Threat To Confidentiality"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"OPINION<\/p>\n

Lawyers can put confidentiality and privilege at risk if AI notetakers are used in meetings \u2013 one of the risks of this burgeoning technology that HNW individuals need to understand.\u00a0\t \t \t \t \t \t \t \t \t \t <\/p>\n


\n In thinking about all the use cases and risks that attend AI in
\n today\u2019s private client advisory sector, one term that ought to
\n stick in the mind right now is \u201cconfidentiality.\u201d \n<\/p>\n


\n For those who don\u2019t follow the twists and turns of AI closely, as
\n well as legal cases, it might not appear obvious that one of the
\n dangers of AI if not used properly is the destruction of
\n lawyer-client privilege. In an industry where HNW and UHNW
\n individuals and families understandably value their privacy, this
\n is a big problem.\u00a0 \n<\/p>\n


\n Many of us who go on Zoom, Teams and other platforms for business
\n meetings might be told in advance \u2013 as we should \u2013 that \u201cthis
\n meeting is being recorded\u201d \u2013 usually in a cheerful voice. For
\n journalists who haven\u2019t mastered the grinding skill of shorthand
\n \u2013 as I did decades ago \u2013 all these recording tools are a
\n godsend.\u00a0 \n<\/p>\n


\n But there is a downside. \n<\/p>\n


\n As noted by the law firm White & Case in an April 23 report,
\n entitled Attorney-client privilege and work product in the
\n age of generative AI,\u00a0two cases illustrate the risks \u2013
\n with very different results. \u00a0 \n<\/p>\n


\n On February 10 this year, the US District Court for the Eastern
\n District of Michigan in Warner v. Gilbarco,
\n Inc\u00a0denied a motion to compel production of documents
\n that a self-represented litigant had prepared using a public AI
\n chatbot. The court found that work product protection
\n applied.\u00a0 \n<\/p>\n


\n A week later, on February 17, the US District Court for the
\n Southern District of New York in United States vs.
\n Heppner reached the opposite result, ordering a criminal
\n defendant to produce documents he had generated using another
\n public AI chatbot while seeking legal advice.\u00a0 \n<\/p>\n


\n The Heppner case was also mentioned at a recent media webinar,
\n which I attended. The event was hosted by law firm ArentFox Schiff<\/a>.
\n Sarah Severson, a partner, explained the risks of AI in meetings
\n where there are not clear understandings about what is involved. \n<\/p>\n


\n Notes taken via AI could be \u201cdiscoverable,\u201d\u00a0she continued.
\n Automated transcripts and summaries are classed as digital
\n documents that opposing counsel can subpoena in civil or criminal
\n cases.\u00a0 \n<\/p>\n


\n Severson said lawyers should always disclose their use of AI to
\n clients in their engagement letters.\u00a0 \n<\/p>\n


\n \u201cAI does not owe clients a duty of confidentiality or
\n accountability,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \n<\/p>\n


\n The root of the problem is that cloud-based processing,
\n third-party vendor data access, and terms of service permitting
\n model training eliminate the legal expectation of
\n confidentiality.\u00a0 \n<\/p>\n


\n This is a global issue. \n<\/p>\n


\n The UK is an example, as recent cases demonstrate. In the case of
\n UK v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] UKUT
\n 81 (Hamid), the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum
\n Chamber) delivered the first decision by an English court or
\n tribunal to directly address what the legal professional
\n privilege risks when confidential and privileged material is
\n uploaded to open-source AI tools.\u00a0 \n<\/p>\n


\n It is important to remember that\u00a0jurisdictions such as
\n Singapore share the common law traditions of the UK and US, for
\n example. As case law builds up around the world, the AI
\n notetaking issue will become a global one.\u00a0 \n<\/p>\n


\n One of the points coming out of all this is that \u2013 as Severson
\n said in the webinar \u2013 AI is a valuable tool. The ability to
\n summarize and collect data is useful, to give just one
\n example.\u00a0The arrival of AI is, it should be said, also a
\n reason why the grunt work that junior lawyers used to do is being
\n replaced. These recent cases are also\u00a0a reminder that large
\n AI models, which\u00a0rely on vast amounts of data, are, in a
\n way, a sort of \u201cpublic\u201d field.\u00a0 \n<\/p>\n


\n Fintechs are starting to address the problem of how public AI can
\n be.\u00a0In
\n early June,<\/a> Custodia, a Swiss privacy-first AI startup, said
\n it had launched Sentinel, a \u201cphysical AI thinking appliance
\n developed and designed from the ground up for executives, family
\n offices, scientific researchers, and any professional whose
\n intellectual property is too valuable and too sensitive to trust
\n to the cloud.\u201d

\n \u00a0

\n Perhaps it is not a coincidence that Custodia is Swiss \u2013 the land
\n of bank secrecy (albeit no longer on cross-border matters),
\n where\u00a0privacy is still highly prized, as it should be.\u00a0 \n<\/p>\n


\n In its press release about the launch, Custodia said: \u201cRather
\n than relying on pre-trained knowledge, Sentinel ingests your
\n documents, understands their context, and retrieves precisely the
\n right information to ground every answer it gives. Load thousands
\n of files \u2013\u00a0financial records, research papers, legal
\n documents, corporate history, correspondence \u2013\u00a0and Sentinel
\n draws only from that store of knowledge. No hallucination from
\n unrelated internet data.\u201d \n<\/p>\n


\n Well, that is the sales pitch, and this news service is looking
\n into this area about private AI to see just how thick the walls
\n of privacy really are. What is clear, however, is that\u00a0if
\n you are a lawyer or a client, or indeed a professional wealth
\n manager, investor or professional figure having a confidential
\n discussion, the AI recording gizmo is off. Or,\u00a0at the very
\n least, the use of these devices must be clearly disclosed ahead
\n of time, giving affected parties a chance to refuse <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lawyers can put confidentiality and privilege at risk if AI notetakers are used in meetings \u2013 one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,7201,7202,7203,7204,7205,7206,7207,7208,7209,7210,7211,7240,7242,7241,7243,7212,7213,7214,7215,7216,7217,7218,7219,7220,7221,7222,7223,7224,7225,7226,7227,7228,7229,7230,7231,7232,7233,7234,3815,7235,7236,7237,7238,7239],"class_list":["post-117714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-family-office","tag-family-office-news","tag-family-risk","tag-family-risk-news","tag-family-wealth","tag-family-wealth-news","tag-family-wealth-report","tag-high-net-worth","tag-high-net-worth-news","tag-hnw","tag-hnw-news","tag-ifa","tag-ifa-news","tag-independent-financial-advisor","tag-independent-financial-advisor-news","tag-mfo","tag-mfo-news","tag-multi-family-office","tag-multi-family-office-news","tag-private-bank","tag-private-bank-news","tag-private-banking","tag-private-banking-news","tag-private-wealth","tag-private-wealth-news","tag-private-wealth-reporting","tag-registered-investment-advisor","tag-registered-investment-advisor-news","tag-ria","tag-ria-news","tag-sfo","tag-sfo-news","tag-single-family-office","tag-single-family-office-news","tag-uhnw","tag-uhnw-news","tag-ultra-net-worth","tag-ultra-net-worth-news","tag-wealth-management","tag-wealth-management-news","tag-wealth-manager","tag-wealth-manager-news","tag-wealth-planning","tag-wealth-planning-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}