If, for example, I have found some way to make some equivalent part cheaper, it is NOT incumbent upon me to disclose how I did it to you or my competitors. In order to protect trade secrets that may give away the answer or process to a competitor, I may lie straight to your face to misdirect you or possibly to throw a competitor down the wrong trail. As long as I'm not causing you harm and am delivering to spec, I consider myself to have a lot of latitude.
In any AI implementation, the company principals would have access to the data anyway so security wasn't compromised. In fact, because of the fallibility of human memory, security is probably better than running the audio through possibly compromised systems running an AI in a data center god knows where. So, data security and provenance was not harmed.
Sure, if you specified not to use indentured labor and I subcontract it to Bangladeshi orphans, you have a right to be upset as the bad PR could harm you. That didn't happen in this instance--the labor was company principals.
I see lots of posturing, but nobody pointing to what violations occurred other than not using <jazz hands> "AI". At no point has anyone in this thread demonstrated any harm to the end user beyond some very vague insinuations of "wrongdoing".
Instead, what I see is a bunch of people getting upset that they used "Disgusting Pixie Dust (direct employee labor)" instead of "Delicious Pixie Dust (AI)". If I'm being snide, I would point out that when the direction of substitution is reversed (AI instead of labor)--the HN legions would be celebrating the cleverness. If I'm being particularly snide, I would chalk the anger up to the fact that it nicely demonstrated that the AI Emperor isn't wearing any clothes and is making a bunch of people angry whose paychecks depend upon the emperor remaining naked.
Now, if they were pitching their "Custom AI" to investors while hand transcribing, that is a very, very different kettle of fish.