AI interviewers: what each vendor records and scores

An "AI interview" is not one product. Across the vendors Control has documented, the session can be a typed chat with no camera at all, a phone call from a voice agent, a two-way video conversation, or a recorded coding assessment with proctoring running alongside. Each captures a different envelope of data, scores it differently, and hands a different artifact to the employer. The label tells you very little; the vendor's privacy notice tells you almost everything.

At the light end, Sapia.ai records nothing but your typed text: five to seven behavioural questions, no timer, no webcam, with the words checked as you type for plagiarism and signs of generative-AI authorship. Ribbon is a voice screen delivered by phone or browser; it has no view of your screen or other windows, and anything it concludes about integrity has to come from audio and timing. Its privacy policy nevertheless lists video recordings and session metadata, so how you joined determines what was captured. TestGorilla runs skills tests in an ordinary browser tab with webcam snapshots every thirty seconds, full-screen and tab-switch logging, and paste detection rolled into a three-state summary.

In the middle sit the conversational interviewers. Eightfold's AI Interviewer asks adaptive follow-ups and states that it does not analyse facial expressions, tone or accent; evaluation is based on what is said, and a human recruiter receives a structured summary. HireVue's models likewise read the transcript, not the video, but the platform still takes periodic snapshots, monitors tab and window switches, and instruments its CodeVue coding assessment with a similarity score and an activity timeline. Since June 2026 HireVue also runs a two-way voice AI Interviewer, so an invitation no longer reliably means a silent recording of fixed prompts.

At the heavy end, Alex (the product formerly marketed as Apriora) delivers transcripts, role-fit scores and fraud flags straight into the employer's applicant tracking system; two of those three outputs never appear on the candidate-facing page. micro1's Zara records audio and video, screen-sharing during technical assessments, transcripts, scores and proctoring analytics, all disclosed in a privacy notice that the interview guide does not link to. Mercor's AI interview is mandatory, recorded, machine-scored, reused across applications, and cannot be downloaded by the candidate. SHL is a menu: a light envelope of periodic webcam stills and event counters, or a heavier one with live audio-video monitoring, face verification and object detection, chosen by the employer.

The pattern that repeats is a gap between the experiential invitation page and the disclosure-bearing legal document. Every vendor here states that a human makes the decision; none of them prevents an employer from opening only the top of a ranked list. Ask before the session whether video is captured or audio only, who reviews the transcript, and whether every submission is read. Ask after it for access, correction or deletion, which most of these policies name as rights.

Each post below reads one vendor's documentation on its own terms, and the general preparation guide covers the format check, evidence plan and tech rehearsal that apply to all of them. Facts are current as of September 2026.