PSA: Anyone with a link can view your Granola notes by default

If you usage the AI-powered note-taking app Granola, you mightiness want to double-check your privateness settings. Though Granola says your notes are “private by default,” it makes them viewable to anyone pinch a link, and besides uses them for soul AI training unless you opt out.

Granola describes itself arsenic an “AI notepad for group successful back-to-back meetings.” It integrates pinch your almanac to seizure audio from your meetings, and past uses AI to make a bulleted database of what you’ve heard, which it calls a “note.” You tin edit the AI-generated notes, induce different collaborators to position them, and usage Granola’s AI adjunct to inquire questions astir your notes and reappraisal the gathering transcript they’re based on.

But successful the app’s settings menu, Granola says, “By default, your notes are viewable to anyone pinch the link.” That intends anyone connected the web tin spot your notes if you accidentally stock a nexus — perchance a awesome rumor if you’re signaling delicate meetings. After testing this retired for myself, I recovered that I could entree my ain statement from a backstage model successful my browser, each without signing into my Granola account. The tract moreover tells you who the statement belongs to and erstwhile it was created.

While I couldn’t position the full transcript linked to the note, I could still position parts of it. Selecting 1 of the slug points generated by Granola pulls up a quote from the transcript that the statement is referring to, on pinch an AI-generated summary pinch further discourse astir the conversation. On its website, Granola says “full transcript entree is disposable to collaborators who unfastened the aforesaid files aliases statement wrong the Granola desktop app.”

In an emailed connection to The Verge, Granola co-founder Sam Stephenson referenced Dropbox links erstwhile explaining the reasoning down the app’s default setting:

You tin alteration who tin position your links by opening Granola, selecting your floor plan successful the bottom-left area of the screen, and past choosing “Settings.” From there, navigate to the “Default nexus sharing” option, and alteration “Anyone pinch the link” to either “Only my company” aliases “Private.” If you delete your note, group pinch the nexus will nary longer beryllium capable to entree it.

One user connected LinkedIn called attraction to the nationalist notes mounting past year, saying, “these links aren’t indexed, but if you stock aliases leak 1 – moreover accidentally – it’s nationalist to whoever finds it.” And astatine slightest 1 awesome institution has denied usage of the instrumentality to a elder executive owed to information concerns, a root tells The Verge.

Additionally, Granola “may usage anonymized data” to amended its AI models, according to the app’s support page. Enterprise customers are opted retired of AI training by default, but group connected each different plans aren’t. You tin disable AI training by going to the settings paper and toggling disconnected the “Use my information to amended models for everyone” option. The institution says it doesn’t let third-party companies, for illustration OpenAI aliases Anthropic, to usage your information for AI training if the mounting is enabled.

Granola’s information page says the institution stores your notes successful a US-hosted Amazon Web Services backstage cloud, and says they are “encrypted astatine remainder and successful transit.” The institution doesn’t shop audio from meetings, either. It only saves gathering notes and transcripts, some of which it processes successful the cloud.

Update, April 3rd: Added Granola’s statement.