Where does my therapy session go when I use an AI note tool?

Usually through three or four companies, and the app you see is often only the interface. The audio goes to one company that turns speech into text. The text goes to another that runs the language model. The note comes back to the app. A therapist who read the terms of the popular tools counted three or four vendors on that path, sometimes more, and 271 colleagues joined the thread.

Who is actually on the path?

More companies than the homepage suggests. The company whose name is on the app usually builds the screen you tap and the template your note lands in. Behind it, a transcription vendor hears the session and a model vendor reads the transcript. Each is a separate business with its own terms, its own staff and its own retention rules.

Every one of them is bound by the same health privacy law. That is true, and it is not the point. The point is that the risk grows with every extra set of hands.

What do the terms say that the homepage does not?

The therapist who started the thread read two sets of terms closely. One popular tool says on its front page that your data is yours and is never used to train AI. Its privacy policy allows de-identified data derived from your sessions to be used for research, product development and improving its models. A records system says recordings are deleted and transcripts go after seven days. Its documentation adds that transcripts can be de-identified, kept, and used to improve the technology.

So the sentence we do not train on your data often means we do not train on data with names in it. Once the names are gone, they can.

Why does this matter more in therapy?

Because a session is not a lab result. The top comment in the thread, with more than two hundred votes, said the worst part was patients not being told what happens to their data. The second, with 77, said that none of the tools require the client's consent to record. They put that on the therapist.

What should I ask before I sign?

Four questions, in writing. Which companies handle the audio and the text. How long each keeps it. Whether anything derived from it is used to train models, and whether opting out is the default. How you and a client get it deleted. If you want the paperwork side, read the three documents to read side by side.

The short version

With most AI note tools, a session passes through three or four companies, and the terms often allow de-identified pieces of it to be kept. Ask for the list in writing. Solanto will keep that list short and public: the trust page names every company on the Cloud mode path and where each agreement stands today, and Private Mode will keep the note on the device for therapy practices.

The price is on the page, not behind a call. Early access is open: solanto.ai/pricing

Send this to a colleague who uses one and ask them to name the companies on the path. Most cannot.