AI Recording Devices at Work: What Alberta Business Owners Need to Know

These Devices Are Already in Your Workplace

There's a new category of consumer device that's gaining traction fast: AI-powered voice recorders. Products like the Plaud Note, Plaud NotePin, iFLYTEK, and Limitless Pendant are small, discreet, and surprisingly capable. The Plaud Note is the size of a credit card and about as thick as three stacked together. It clips to the back of a phone or slips into a wallet.

These aren't niche products. Plaud alone has shipped over 1.5 million units and crossed $10 million in sales. The broader AI voice recorder market is approaching $2 billion. They're marketed to professionals, students, and anyone who takes meetings.

The appeal is obvious. Press a button, record a conversation, and get a full transcript with AI-generated summaries, action items, and speaker identification within minutes. No more scribbling notes or trying to remember what was agreed to.

But there's a side to this that most business owners haven't thought through yet.

This Isn't Your Grandfather's Tape Recorder

The old concern about someone recording a conversation was that a copy of the audio existed somewhere. That was manageable. You could address it with a conversation and a handshake.

Modern AI recording devices are different in ways that matter. When someone records a conversation with one of these devices, the audio doesn't just stay on the device. It gets uploaded to a cloud service, processed by AI models, transcribed into searchable text, summarized into structured notes, and stored on servers operated by a third party.

That means a private conversation between two people in your office can become a searchable document sitting on a server you don't control, processed by AI systems you didn't agree to, and retained according to policies you've never seen.

Some of these services use conversation data to train their AI models. Some store recordings indefinitely. Some offer the transcripts through a web interface accessible from anywhere. The privacy policies and terms of service vary by vendor, and most users never read them.

What Canadian Law Actually Says

Canada follows a one-party consent rule for recording private conversations. Under Section 184(2)(a) of the Criminal Code, a person can legally record a conversation they're part of without telling anyone else. As long as you're a participant, you can record. You don't need permission from the other people in the room.

This is different from some U.S. states (like California and Illinois) that require all parties to consent. In Alberta, one-party consent is the standard.

However, there are limits. Recording a conversation you're not part of is a criminal offence under Section 184(1), punishable by up to five years in prison. And the purpose of the recording matters. If a recording is intended for unlawful purposes or is distributed without consent, it can lead to both criminal charges and civil liability.

So legally, an employee sitting in a meeting with you can record the conversation without saying a word about it. That's the law.

But the law doesn't address what happens after the recording is made. And that's where the real business risk begins.

The Confidentiality Problem

Here's the scenario that should concern business owners most.

Most businesses operate under some form of confidentiality obligation. Maybe it's an NDA with a client. Maybe it's a vendor agreement that restricts how pricing or contract terms are shared. Maybe it's a professional obligation tied to handling patient records, financial data, or legal matters. Whatever the form, those agreements typically govern how sensitive information is handled, who has access to it, and how it's protected.

Now imagine an employee records one of those internal conversations using an AI device. The audio gets uploaded to Plaud's cloud, transcribed by OpenAI's Whisper, summarized by GPT-4, and stored on the employee's personal account.

That client information is now sitting on third-party servers, processed by AI systems, and outside your company's control entirely. You didn't authorize it. You may not even know it happened.

The employee didn't do anything illegal. But your company may have just breached its confidentiality agreement with that client.

This isn't a hypothetical. These devices are affordable, widely available, and marketed specifically for capturing business meetings. If your employees haven't started using them yet, it's likely a matter of time.

Beyond Client Confidentiality

Confidentiality agreements are the sharpest risk, but they're not the only one. Consider what else gets discussed in normal business conversations: employee performance issues, compensation details, vendor pricing and contract terms, proprietary processes and procedures, legal strategy, and HR matters.

In Alberta, the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) governs how private-sector organizations collect, use, and disclose personal information. PIPA applies whether information is recorded or not. But a recording that's processed by a third-party AI service creates a much more tangible trail than a conversation that lives only in someone's memory.

If an employee records a discussion that includes another employee's health information, disciplinary history, or compensation, and that recording ends up on a cloud service, you've got a privacy issue that goes well beyond what one-party consent was designed to address.

What You Should Do About It

This is a solvable problem. It just requires getting ahead of it. Here's a practical path forward.

Step 1: Find out where you stand today

Ask your employees directly whether anyone is using AI recording or transcription tools. No blame, no judgment. You just need to know. Also check whether any virtual meeting tools (Teams, Zoom, Google Meet) have AI transcription or recording features enabled. These features are increasingly turned on by default, and you may not have configured them intentionally.

Step 2: Review your existing agreements

Pull your employee confidentiality agreements, client NDAs, and vendor contracts. Look for language about how confidential information is stored, who can access it, and whether third-party processing is addressed. In most cases, it won't be. These agreements were written before a pocket-sized device could send a conversation to a cloud AI service in seconds.

Step 3: Create a workplace recording policy

A written policy should cover whether recording is permitted at all, what types of conversations are always off-limits, which tools (if any) are approved for recording and transcription, where recordings and transcripts must be stored, how long they're kept before deletion, and what happens when someone violates the policy. The goal is to be specific enough that employees understand the rules, but practical enough that it doesn't prevent legitimate use of technology.

Step 4: Update confidentiality agreements between parties

This is the step most businesses miss. Your internal policies only cover your own employees. But what about the other side of the table? When you enter into confidentiality agreements with clients, vendors, or partners, both parties should acknowledge whether AI recording tools are permitted during shared conversations. If they are, the agreement should set expectations around which tools are acceptable, where data is stored, and how each party evaluates vendor data governance. This isn't about adding pages of legalese. It's about making sure both sides know the rules before someone pulls out a device.

Step 5: Communicate it

A policy nobody knows about doesn't protect you. Walk your team through the reasoning, not just the rules. Most employees using these devices aren't trying to cause problems. They're trying to be more productive. A direct conversation about why recording policies matter, especially the confidentiality angle, will go further than a policy document that sits in a drawer.

The Bigger Picture

AI recording devices are part of a broader shift. AI meeting assistants on Zoom and Teams, wearable AI pins, smart glasses with built-in recording, and always-on transcription apps are all becoming more common. The technology is moving faster than most workplace policies can keep up.

The underlying question isn't really about recording. It's about data control. When a conversation happens in your office, you have some measure of control over that information. When the same conversation gets processed by a third-party AI service and stored on external servers, you've lost that control. For businesses with confidentiality obligations, that loss of control has real consequences.

This doesn't require a massive policy overhaul. In most cases, a few targeted updates to existing agreements and a clear workplace policy will close the gap. The important thing is to do it before it becomes a problem rather than after.