Beware this terrible new AI email feature

A friend of mine got a nasty shock last week after a Google Meet call, thanks to a new AI function that he was unaware of. On this occasion, the consequences were quite funny, but on another day his failure to get his head around this new technology could have ended his career.

We’re all familiar with the poor sod who hits ‘reply all’ when responding to an email and accidentally copies in precisely the person whom he doesn’t want to read it. I’ve done it myself. I’ve also heard horror stories about people inadvertently switching their cameras on in the middle of a Zoom call when they’re on the loo or in their underpants – not something I’ve ever done, thank God. And in 2022 the Free Speech Union defended a railway conductor who was sacked after he failed to disconnect at the end of a teleconference on ‘white privilege’ and was overheard by the instructor saying to his wife: ‘You know what I really wanted to ask? And I wish I had. Do they have black privilege in other countries? So if you’re in Ghana…’

But this latest incident takes the biscuit. My friend – let’s call him Harry – was on a Meet work call in which he and his colleagues were pitching to the gay CEO of a large company and his high-energy female number two, hoping to persuade them to sign up to a multimillion-pound contract. At the conclusion of the call, after the two had left, Harry decided to engage in a bit of post-match analysis. ‘From now on I think we’re going to have to call those two Pinky and Perky,’ he told his workmates.

After he’d ended the call, an email popped into his inbox marked ‘transcript’.