You apply for a job. The confirmation email includes a link to complete a video interview on your own time. No interviewer — just a camera, a timer, and a series of prompts. You record your answers, submit, and wait.
What happens to that video is a question most job seekers don’t think to ask.
AI video interview platforms record your responses and then analyse them. Depending on the platform and what features the employer has purchased, this analysis may include transcribing your words, scoring your verbal content against competency models, analysing your speaking pace and tone, and generating a composite score that influences whether a human ever reviews your application.
More than 83% of employers now use some form of automated screening. AI video interviews are a significant and growing part of that infrastructure.
How AI Video Interview Platforms Work
The major platforms in this space include HireVue, Spark Hire, VidCruiter, and Montage. Employers use them for initial screening, competency assessment, and asynchronous interview completion at scale.
The typical workflow: a candidate receives a link, records timed responses to structured questions, and the recording is uploaded to the platform’s servers. The platform processes the recording — transcribing audio, generating scores or summaries — and provides results to the recruiter.
What Gets Analysed
The analysis varies by platform and employer configuration.
Transcript-based analysis — what you said, how you phrased answers, specific language patterns — is standard on most platforms. Audio analysis — speaking rate, pauses, filler words, tonal variation — is available on most platforms and enabled in many implementations.
Visual analysis — facial expressions, eye contact, physical movement — was common until significant scrutiny led some platforms to reduce or remove it. HireVue, the largest player in the space, announced in 2021 that it would discontinue facial-analysis scoring after a third-party audit found it contributed minimally to predictive validity. The company shifted to transcript-based scoring. Whether other platforms have followed suit is less clear; not all disclose their analysis methods in detail.
What Gets Stored
Your recording and any analysis generated from it are stored on the platform’s servers. Default retention periods are often long — months to years. Some platforms retain recordings for as long as the employer account is active.
The recruiter can review your recording. So can their colleagues. In some configurations, multiple people at the company can access candidate recordings without the candidate having any visibility into who has done so.
The Legal Landscape
AI video interviews have become a site of active legal scrutiny.
Illinois’s Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act (AIVFA), with its February amendments taking full effect this year, tightened disclosure requirements: employers using AI to analyse video interviews must notify candidates before the interview begins, explain at a basic level how the AI works, and obtain explicit consent. They cannot share AI-analysed video content with third parties without consent.
The law covers employers hiring in Illinois, including remote roles where the employer is based there. As of this year, over two dozen other states were considering similar legislation.
The biometric front has been equally active. In Deyerler v. HireVue, decided earlier this year, the court extended Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act to cover AI video interview analysis. The court held that the platform’s analysis extracted biometric identifiers from facial data during processing — even after HireVue’s stated removal of facial scoring. The ruling expanded BIPA’s reach to AI hiring platforms and has prompted other platforms to review their data practices.
What the Data Is Used For
Recruiter Review
Your video is watched. Depending on the role and organisation, it may be watched by multiple people: the recruiter, the hiring manager, team members. There is typically no log disclosed to you of who has viewed it.
AI Scoring and Ranking
Most platforms generate a score or ranking from your interview. This score influences whether you advance. The criteria used to generate it — what verbal patterns, answers, or language is rewarded or penalised — are proprietary and not disclosed to candidates.
The ACLU filed a complaint in early 2025 alleging that an AI hiring assessment platform discriminated against deaf candidates and non-white applicants, on the grounds that transcript-based scoring embedded biases from training data. The complaint was ongoing as of this year. The broader concern — that AI scoring of interviews can systematically disadvantage candidates from certain backgrounds, speech patterns, or communication styles — has not been resolved by industry practice or regulation.
Product Improvement
Platform privacy policies typically reserve the right to use de-identified or aggregated data to improve their AI systems. What “de-identified” means in the context of a video recording with transcribed content is a meaningful question that these policies often don’t answer clearly.
Your Rights as a Candidate
Right to Know
In Illinois and other states with AI hiring disclosure laws, you have the right to be notified before an AI-analysed video interview, a basic explanation of the AI’s role, and consent before analysis begins. Outside of these jurisdictions, disclosure requirements are limited.
Right to Access
Under GDPR, EU residents have the right to access personal data held about them by an employer or hiring platform, including interview recordings and any AI-generated analysis. Under US state privacy laws, similar rights apply to residents of covered states, though the scope varies.
Right to Deletion
Requesting deletion of your interview recording is the candidate’s only mechanism for removing it from a platform’s servers. Whether and how effectively deletion requests are honoured varies by platform. Many route deletion through the employer account rather than direct candidate contact — which means deletion may depend on the employer making the request on your behalf.
Practical Guidance for Job Seekers
Before the Interview
Find out which platform the employer is using. Look up that platform’s privacy policy specifically for: how long recordings are retained, whether they are used for AI training, whether they are shared with third parties, and what your deletion rights are.
In states with AI disclosure requirements, you’re entitled to this information before consenting to the interview. Outside those states, you may need to find it yourself.
During the Interview
You have no technical means to prevent data collection during an AI video interview — you’re using the platform’s infrastructure. What you can control: be deliberate about what you share. Context that isn’t relevant to your professional qualifications — personal circumstances, health information, family details — serves no useful purpose and becomes part of the stored record.
After the Interview
If you want your recording removed — regardless of the outcome — submit a deletion request to the platform directly and keep a copy of the request. Follow up in writing. In regulated states, the employer has specific obligations around candidate recording retention periods.
Treat the Platform as a Stranger Storing Your Data
That is, practically, what it is. A company you haven’t chosen, operating under terms you didn’t negotiate, holding video of you answering questions. Apply the same scrutiny to the privacy policy as you would to any service you sign up for.
The Broader Pattern
AI video interviews are efficient for employers. At scale, they allow screening of hundreds of candidates without scheduling coordination. For job seekers, the efficiency operates differently: an AI system scores an interview conducted in isolation, without the context that a human interviewer would have, under criteria that aren’t disclosed.
What’s a routine screening step from the employer’s perspective involves the candidate’s video being stored on a third-party platform, analysed by systems with undisclosed criteria, reviewed by an indeterminate number of people, and retained for an extended period — potentially used to improve the AI that scores future candidates.
That data trail exists even if you weren’t hired. Even if you withdrew your application. Even if the employer didn’t bother to notify you of the outcome.
The right response isn’t to refuse AI video interviews — that’s not realistic for most job seekers in a market where most employers use automated screening. The right response is to understand what you’re agreeing to, know your rights under applicable law, and request deletion of your recording once you’re no longer in consideration for a role.
Storing Your Job Search Privately
If you’re maintaining your own records — notes on employers, compensation research, interview preparation, reference documents, contracts — keeping those in your own controlled storage is different from storing them in application platform accounts that you’ll eventually lose access to.
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