Krisp - AI Meeting Assistant for Noise Cancellation and Transcription
Mac Apps
If you have online meetings using apps like Slack, Microsoft
Teams. Zoom or Google Meet, you can get free noise cancellation via AI
as well as meeting transcripts and recordings via Krisp, a business app with a generous free
tier. Make sure you clearly understand the privacy policy before doing
so.
Noise Cancellation
The AI-powered noise cancellation is bidirectional. It removes any extraneous sounds, background voices and echos. If you elect to use only this feature, none of the data from your calls is recorded on Krisp's cloud servers. Users of the free plan get 60 minutes of cumulative noise cancellation per day. If you purchase a pro ($8 a month)or a business ($15 a month) plan, you get unlimited voice cancellation.
Recording and Transcription
If you choose to let Krisp record your calls onto its cloud servers, you can get unlimited diarized transcription for free and the paid plans also offer audio and video recordings of your meetings. Krisp technology can generate meeting notes complete with action items. The data is presented to you in a way that makes it easy to share with other meeting participants.
My Experience
Krisp encourages people signing up for an account to use their work email by granting a seven-day free trial of the pro plan to those who do. As part of the sign up procedure I had to give it access to either my Outlook calendar or Google calendar. My organization doesn't allow third-party apps to access anything inside our Microsoft 365 tenant, so I opted to connect a Google account. It asked for access to all my contacts, which I did not grant. It asked for access to my calendar events, which I did grant. Furthermore, it asked for access to all calendars to which I have access. I said no to that. After that, my account was created, and I was provided an opportunity to download the software, which comes as a package installer.
Reading the Privacy Policy
Krisp says that the recordings of your meetings are encrypted and stored on its cloud servers, and that it does not use the content for any business purposes. However, it does collect considerable data about your specific computer, tying the machine identifier to your account identity. It makes that data available to third-party vendors and if you want to know what happens then, you have to find out who those vendors are and what their individual privacy policies are. Krisp also
This site uses Google, Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook remarketing services or tags to advertise to previous visitors to Krisp on third-party platforms such as those mentioned. With the help of cookies or tags, these remarketing services allow it to advertise itself to visitors who may have visited them. Thankfully, they provide opt-out links to every one of the services right from the privacy policy page.
The other thing that jumped out at me about their privacy policy was their clear admission that if the cops come for your data, Krisp is going to give it to them.
I can see a use for the app for areas of my life that aren't sensitive and that I can wall off from my primary Internet presence. Work related calls don't give me privacy heartburn and volunteer activities that don't involve any kind of political engagement are OK too, if I feel like going to the trouble of making a separate Google or Microsoft account for them. Otherwise, I'll find some other solution.