A Dentons employment partner warns AI-generated meeting notes and prompts are increasingly discoverable in unfair dismissal cases
As Australian tribunals grapple with a surge in generative AI use, Nick Linke, partner and Australian head of employment and safety at Dentons, is warning HR practitioners that the AI note-takers and chatbots they use every day could end up as evidence against them.
Speaking to HRD, Linke said the growing use of AI note-takers in internal HR and management meetings – including discussions about redundancies and terminations – is creating a real-time, complete transcript of decision-making that did not exist a decade ago.
"If you end up with an unfair dismissal claim or a general protections claim, and those transcripts are relevant, they might then be discoverable in the proceedings," he said.
Under Australia's discovery rules, documents relevant to a dispute – including electronic records – can be ordered to be produced to the other side and the Fair Work Commission (FWC) during a case.
Linke said that shift changes the risk calculation for HR teams using AI tools to summarise sensitive conversations.
"Someone may take notes or may not take notes deliberately, and then they'd move on," he said, contrasting today's practice with the past. "Now you've got this real-time complete transcript."
That matters most when a manager makes an offhand comment during a recorded meeting – for example, referencing an...
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