How long should we keep AI meeting transcripts?
There is no magic number. Default the raw transcript to auto-delete, set the timer with your legal and records functions, and never let it override a legal hold or a required regulated record.
Short answer: default them to delete, and set the actual number with the people who own the risk, not the people who own the calendar.
The instinct to keep everything is exactly backwards. An imperfect transcript that lingers forever is a permanent, discoverable record of things that may never have been said. So make the default state gone: configure the raw transcript to auto-delete on a timer, in the system, not as a suggestion people are asked to remember. Keeping one should be a deliberate act, and the moment a person keeps it, they become the author of record and owe it the cleaning and verification that turns it into a real minute.
How long is the timer? That is a genuinely legal question, and it is not one a case study can answer for you. Two hard constraints sit above any number you pick. Once litigation is reasonably anticipated, a duty to preserve can attach to electronically stored information regardless of your deletion policy (FRCP 37(e)). And some regulated records carry their own affirmative retention requirements that your timer must never delete. Set the number with your legal, compliance, and records-retention functions, and check it against your own regulatory obligations if your meetings touch regulated work. The worked example, and why the ownership rule and the timer need each other, is in Delete It by Default.
Cheers,
-Titus
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