Why an AI consultant switched from cloud dictation to fully local speech recognition

A French-Canadian AI consultant who regularly dictates code prompts, variable names, and proprietary business logic realized that cloud-based dictation tools like Wispr Flow and Otter transmit sensitive audio to remote servers. He noted that such data — including undisclosed product names, database schemas, and internal acronyms — can be retained for model improvement or accessed internally, creating NDA liability for the user. He switched to a fully offline setup powered by faster-whisper, an optimized implementation of OpenAI's Whisper model that runs entirely on a local CPU without any network requests. A simple verification method involves cutting Wi-Fi during dictation: if transcription still works, the solution is genuinely local. He acknowledges limitations, including reduced accuracy with Quebec French accents, but argues that network silence — not a vendor's privacy policy — is the only reliable proof of confidentiality.