There are two ways for an AI to listen to a meeting, and the difference between them is not technical: it is about who finds out.
The first is to put a bot in the call. It joins as one more participant, shows up in the list with its name, and sometimes asks the host for permission. The second is to listen from your own computer, without entering the meeting. Saelyx does the second. This article covers why, and above all what that means for the other people on the call.
01What you gain without a bot
- No participant nobody invited. There is no "Notetaker has joined the meeting" halfway through a negotiation, which is the exact moment a conversation changes tone.
- You don't depend on the host. If the meeting isn't yours, you don't have to get anyone admitted.
- It works whatever the platform. Saelyx doesn't need an integration with your video-call tool, because it doesn't connect to it: it listens to what plays on your Mac.
And one thing people always ask: the others don't hear Saelyx. It doesn't speak in the call, doesn't introduce itself and doesn't touch the audio. Suggestions appear in a panel on your screen that only you see because it sits outside the window you are sharing, not because it is camouflaged. We do not hide that panel from screen-sharing software and we do not sell invisibility as a feature.
02And now the uncomfortable part
All of the above boils down to a sentence that sounds good and means something serious: the others don't find out.
A bot is ugly but it is honest. It shows up by name in the participant list, and anyone on the call can see it and decide what to say in front of it. When the listening lives inside your computer, that signal disappears. The meeting is being recorded and summarised, and only you know.
Which is why the regulation does not split responsibility the way marketing does. When you switch Meeting Mode on, you act as the controller for the participants' data: informing them, and where applicable asking their permission, is on you. Saelyx acts as the processor handling the meeting on your behalf. It is written that way in the privacy policy and it isn't small print: it is the actual split.
Put bluntly: getting rid of the bot does not get rid of your duty to tell people. It makes it easier to forget.
03What we ask before the first meeting
Recording and summarising means processing the voice and content of other people. So Meeting Mode doesn't just switch on: it asks for your explicit recording consent before the first time, it can be withdrawn in Settings, and on withdrawal we stop accepting new recordings.
We also keep a record of what you consented to, when, and against which version of the text, and you can find it in your data export. Not because it looks good: because consent you cannot check is no use for what it has to be good for.
04Some small print you won't expect
There is an on-demand capture setting that cuts camera sending down to one frame per turn instead of continuous. In Meeting Mode that setting does not apply: the camera is streamed anyway, even if you chose otherwise.
It is deliberate —continuous vision is what makes it possible to follow what happens in the room— but it means your preference does not protect you there. We would rather you knew than found out. What exactly leaves your computer we cover in full in another article.
05How long it is kept
The raw transcript of the meeting —which includes the voice and content of the participants— is kept for thirty days and then deletes itself. The distilled summary stays until you delete it or close your account. You can delete one specific meeting from the app without touching anything else.
It is the only automatic deletion we have. Everything else persists until you remove it, which we explain in the article about the memory.
06What Meeting Mode does not do
- It sends nothing to Notion, Slack or your CRM, because we don't have those integrations. If your problem is getting notes into the CRM automatically, there are better tools than us for that today and buying us would be a mistake.
- It doesn't produce a shared transcript for the team. What comes out is yours.
- It is Mac only, macOS 13 or later. It does not exist on Windows.
- It doesn't work offline.
- It is a paid feature.
07A status warning, which is not the same as a catalogue
Meeting Mode is the youngest thing we have and it is still in active polish with the people who already have access. It works, but it does not have the finish of the rest of the product: the panel's rhythm is being tuned, and if the Mac goes to sleep with a meeting open it is worth switching it on again.
We say it in the article and not in a footnote, because selling something still being run in as finished is the fastest way to lose someone who trusted you.
08Frequently asked questions
Do the others know I'm using Meeting Mode?
Not from Saelyx: it doesn't join the call, doesn't speak and doesn't touch the audio. And precisely for that reason, telling them is on you: switching it on makes you the controller for their data.
Do I have to tell the participants?
It is your responsibility to inform them and, where applicable, to get their permission. We process the meeting on your behalf. What exactly applies depends on where you are and what meeting it is, and there we cannot decide for you.
Why not build a bot, like everyone else?
Because a participant nobody invited changes the meeting the moment it appears, and because we don't want to depend on having an integration with every platform. The trade-off is spelled out above and it isn't small.
Does it work on Windows or the iPhone?
Meeting Mode is Mac, macOS 13 or later. From any computer with a browser you can talk to the agent by voice, but that is conversation, not the panel over the video call.
How long do you keep the meeting?
The raw transcript, thirty days, then it deletes itself. The summary stays until you delete it or close your account.
How do I get it?
It comes inside the Mac app and it is a paid feature. Today you get in by invitation: you ask on the website and requests are reviewed by hand, one at a time.