Therapists aren't being told the full story about some other AI note-taking tools. And clients are being told even less.
There are already clear guidelines about recording therapy sessions. So why does that suddenly get fuzzy the moment someone says "AI"?
A lot of these so-called "AI scribes" are just recording the whole session and shipping it off to their servers to be stored, transcribed, and processed. But they rarely say that part out loud. Truly, you'd be surprised how infrequently the word "recording" shows up. (And don't get us started on "de-identification" and training data.)
Instead, you get vague phrases like "ambient listening" or "passive documentation" -- as if the AI is magically taking notes without first hitting record.
That's not how it works.
Even big professional organizations are releasing AI guidelines now... and somehow skipping the part where most of these tools start with recording everything.
(Truly, you take a look at the recently-published AI guidelines, and there's not a reference to the existing guidelines on recording sessions! These AI startups have won this first battle by getting everyone to use this very generic "AI" term and hoping people don't care about the details.)
Here's the thing:
You can absolutely use AI without recording your sessions.
You can streamline the boring stuff and keep the therapy space sacred.
Please, let's push back on this. It's worth it.
