Our secure advantage over Otter and other AI transcription services

Journalists and others with confidential information are taking a risk with free AI services, such as Otter, to lose control of data, according to a new Politico investigation:

Otter “shares your personal data with a whole host of people, including mobile advertising tracking providers, so it strikes me that there’s an awful lot of personal data and the potential for leakage of sources for journalists,” said Paul Rosenzweig, former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security, and founder of Red Branch Consulting.

Avoid going down the rabbit hole with our highly personalized — and accountable — service. We have a very limited and transparent chain of command (human manager Paula supervises human transcriptionists), so you know exactly who sees, and then deletes, your data. We never share your data with anyone and never use AI programs to transcribe. (In fact, we have a good business correcting clients’ AI transcripts — or more commonly, starting from scratch.)

Here, you have choices of levels of security. If you have a secure online dropbox — either private or based at a university of corporation — your material will never even go through email. One transcriptionist, whom you personally approve and be in direct contact with, can then retrieve recordings and deposit completed transcripts. That can be the only person at our company who ever accesses your interviews.

For maximum security, we have in-person non-internet options: As we have done with sensitive immigration cases and internal corporate research, we can even arrange for you to drop off a thumb drive personally to a transcriptionist and then pick it up, with completed transcripts added. For several years, we have also sent typists to work onsite at a market research firm in Evanston that handles health research for the federal government. For these services, we are mainly based throughout the Chicago area, but we also have long-time transcriptionists based in the Denver area, Fort Worth area, Ohio, South Carolina and Washington, D.C.

We are available for phone or email consultation to discuss your own preferred strategy. In business since 1995, we have a long track record of trust and security and can likely provide a relevant reference for your type of business.

See our confidentiality policy here.