AI Transcripts Gone Wild – The Day a Transcription Company Asked a Court Reporter to “Certify” Their Robot

Just when we thought we’d seen it all.

This week, a transcription company actually called a certified court reporter in Arizona and said, “Hey, we made an AI recording of a deposition — we do this all over the country. Can you certify it for us?”

Let that sink in.
They wanted a licensed officer of the court to certify a machine-generated transcript — one that wasn’t taken down by a live reporter, wasn’t monitored, wasn’t even preserved properly. The company didn’t save the original audio file. There’s no record to salvage, no human verification, no chain of custody. Just a digital hallucination masquerading as a legal record.

And when the attorney (bless them) realized this “AI deposition” didn’t meet Arizona state code, they demanded that it be certified by a licensed reporter to be admissible.

That’s when the transcription company had the gall — the cojones — to ask if a reporter would just “sign off” on it.

Why This Is a Dangerous Precedent

In states like Arizona, California, Nevada, and Texas, deposition transcripts are legally recognized only when certified by a licensed court reporter.
Certification isn’t a rubber stamp — it’s a sworn oath that the record is true, complete, and impartial. It’s backed by years of training, licensure, continuing education, and a code of ethics enforced by state boards.

An AI transcript, no matter how “accurate” it claims to be, doesn’t have:

A live officer administering the oath.
A verified chain of custody for the record.
Any accountability for tampering, omissions, or bias.
The ability to certify compliance with procedural codes (like CCP 2025.330 in California or Rule 30 in Arizona).

Yet, here we are — facing companies so eager to cut corners that they’re literally asking reporters to launder the record by attaching their professional seal to an uncertified, machine-generated document.

When “Efficiency” Becomes Fraud

This isn’t innovation. It’s impersonation.

When a transcriptionist or notary signs a “certificate” page that looks like a reporter’s, it’s not just misleading — it’s potentially fraudulent.
A certification page using the wrong title (CSR vs. transcriptionist vs. notary) misrepresents the record’s origin and violates state deposition codes.
Worse yet, it misleads courts and litigants who assume the transcript carries the weight of a certified, verbatim record.

One commenter put it best:

“Only an idiot would certify that.”

Another shared:

“The witness literally said they didn’t consent to being recorded by AI — only by the reporter. The attorneys thanked me for catching it. Then they started whispering about what happened in the past.”

If that doesn’t make your skin crawl, it should.

The Slippery Slope of “Just This Once”

And yet, there will always be a handful of reporters who will rationalize it.

“It’s already done — I might as well get paid to fix it.”
“It’s not my job to police the industry.”
“They’ll find someone else if I say no.”

This is how the profession erodes — not from the outside, but from within. Every time a reporter agrees to certify someone else’s digital transcript, it undermines every certified reporter’s credibility. It tells attorneys, agencies, and AI companies that our licenses are for sale.

They’re not.

The Real Solution: Education and Enforcement

The attorneys in this case deserve credit — one of them had the legal literacy to demand a proper certification. That’s where our focus should be: educating the bar.

Attorneys need to know:

An uncertified AI transcript is not admissible in most jurisdictions.
State codes mandate a licensed court reporter for deposition certification.
“Cost savings” disappear when the transcript gets tossed for non-compliance.

Meanwhile, court reporting boards and associations should make examples of this behavior.
If a company is advertising “AI depositions” as equivalent to certified transcripts, that’s false advertising and unauthorized practice under most state laws. Period.

Final Word: Don’t Certify Garbage

This story isn’t just a funny “Can you believe it?” moment. It’s a flashing red warning light for our entire profession.

AI doesn’t take an oath.
AI doesn’t answer to the CR Board.
AI doesn’t have a conscience — or a license to lose.

So the next time someone calls asking you to certify an AI-generated transcript, you know exactly what to say:

#BiteMe

Published by stenoimperium

We exist to facilitate the fortifying of the Stenography profession and ensure its survival for the next hundred years! As court reporters, we've handed the relationship role with our customers, or attorneys, over to the agencies and their sales reps. This has done a lot of damage to our industry. It has taken away our ability to have those relationships, the ability to be humanized and valued. We've become a replaceable commodity. Merely saying we are the “Gold Standard” tells them that we’re the best, but there are alternatives. Who we are though, is much, much more powerful than that! We are the Responsible Charge. “Responsible Charge” means responsibility for the direction, control, supervision, and possession of stenographic & transcription work, as the case may be, to assure that the work product has been critically examined and evaluated for compliance with appropriate professional standards by a licensee in the profession, and by sealing and signing the documents, the professional stenographer accepts responsibility for the stenographic or transcription work, respectively, represented by the documents and that applicable stenographic and professional standards have been met. This designation exists in other professions, such as engineering, land surveying, public water works, landscape architects, land surveyors, fire preventionists, geologists, architects, and more. In the case of professional engineers, the engineering association adopted a Responsible Charge position statement that says, “A professional engineer is only considered to be in responsible charge of an engineering work if the professional engineer makes independent professional decisions regarding the engineering work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional engineer’s physical presence at the location where the engineering work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the engineering work.” If we were to adopt a Responsible Charge position statement for our industry, we could start with a draft that looks something like this: "A professional court reporter, or stenographer, is only considered to be in responsible charge of court reporting work if the professional court reporter makes independent professional decisions regarding the court reporting work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional court reporter’s physical presence at the location where the court reporting work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the court reporting work.” Shared purpose The cornerstone of a strategic narrative is a shared purpose. This shared purpose is the outcome that you and your customer are working toward together. It’s more than a value proposition of what you deliver to them. Or a mission of what you do for the world. It’s the journey that you are on with them. By having a shared purpose, the relationship shifts from consumer to co-creator. In court reporting, our mission is “to bring justice to every litigant in the U.S.” That purpose is shared by all involved in the litigation process – judges, attorneys, everyone. Who we are is the Responsible Charge. How we do that is by Protecting the Record. View more posts