Conversations Between Apple Store Workers and Customers Can Now Be Recorded

Both parties must opt in to being recorded, but some employees are nervous about the pilot project.

Apple has begun recording conversations between Genius Bar workers and customers inside Apple stores.

As Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg, the pilot scheme uses a system called Live Notes. It records conversations between employees and customers, making a transcription, which is then AI-summarized.

That transcription and summary then serves as a record of the interaction and is sent to the to the emplyee’s iPad. Both the employee and the customer must consent to the recording — otherwise, Live Notes won’t be activated.

While the stated aim is to save the Genuis Bar worker time, the project has naturally raised some concerns. Namely, that it could potentially be used to snoop on workers and be passed on to managers. Apple says that isn’t the case.

“The company has indicated that the recordings themselves won’t be saved and managers don’t receive the transcripts,” Gurmran reports in his Power On column. “Employees also can edit both the transcript and summary before saving them to Apple’s internal Genius Bar system.”

However, Apple could potentially expand the Live Notes system. Gizmodo reports that America’s largest bank, JPMorgan, rolled out an “Orwellian” monitoring tool that collects data on meeting schedules, video calls, and keystroke data. The bank compares it to weekly screen time reports on smartphones, “this tool is about awareness — not enforcement,” the bank adds.

Monitoring employees’ keystrokes has gone down like a lead balloon over at Meta, where staff morale is said to have plummeted so much that Mark Zuckerberg’s company recently increased the snack budget to bring back the good vibes.

Employees are naturally wary of such invasive measures since these so-called “productivity aids” could turn into a tool for managers to assess performance, or worse still, be used to ultimately replace workers with AI automation.

This past weekend, Apple briefly became the world’s most valuable company, surpassing semiconductor manufacturer Nvidia as both companies hover around a market valuation of $5 trillion.

Image creditsHeader photo licensed via Depositphotos.

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