Artificial Intelligence - Protecting Privilege With Artificial Intelligence In The (Virtual) Room

Introduction

Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence ("AI") have brought the mainstream use of AI into our daily lives and daily work lives. While AI has been used by litigators for over a decade in e-discovery, new applications and tools that utilize AI are prompting new questions. One of these questions is: whether and how organizations can use AI without waiving privilege. Many meetings, including with legal counsel, are now conducted using videoconferencing platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Google Meet or Zoom. AI note-taking applications often 'attend' these meetings to transcribe meeting notes and generate meeting summaries. Does the presence of such an AI notetaker during a meeting result in waiving solicitor-client privilege? To answer this, we need to consider both privilege and how AI works.