Ethic8: Canadian transcription and translation for community-based research
Ethic8 is a Canadian-owned platform that records, transcribes, translates, and summarizes research interviews, focus groups, and community conversations. It was developed by researchers at Simon Fraser University to address a common concern in community-based research: how transcription tools handle sensitive research data. Many popular tools transfer research data outside Canada, retain it on foreign servers, use it to train AI models, or share it with third parties. These practices can complicate ethics review and the data commitments researchers make to community partners.
Key features
Canadian-owned: Built with privacy and Canadian data sovereignty at the core of its design.
Designed for research ethics: Built around TCPS 2 and research ethics board (REB) privacy requirements, making it easier to describe and justify in ethics applications.
No AI training on your data: User data is never used to train AI models.
Made for sensitive conversations: Suited to research involving lived experience and community-held knowledge.
One secure workflow: Record, transcribe, translate, and summarize without moving data between multiple tools.
Why it matters for community-based research
Community-based research depends on trust and accountable relationships. Participants and community partners often share personal stories and community knowledge, and they need confidence about where those recordings go and who controls them. In research with Indigenous communities, Indigenous data sovereignty affirms the community’s right to decide how its data is collected, stored, and used. The tools researchers choose are part of keeping those commitments. Ethic8 gives researchers clear answers about ownership and data use that they can share with community partners and ethics boards, so sensitive conversations are handled in ways that honour participants’ privacy and community expectations around data.
Learn more at ethic8.com
