AI note-takers are recording more than you think

Question 1: What does an AI note-taker actually do?

An AI note-taker is a tool that joins a meeting, records the audio and sometimes the video, turns the speech into a written transcript, and produces a summary. Common ones include:

• Microsoft 365 Copilot in Teams. Built into the Microsoft ecosystem, with data staying inside your own tenant.
• Otter and Fireflies. Third-party tools that connect to your calendar and can join calls automatically.
• Fathom. Another calendar-linked note-taker, with its own separate storage and sharing defaults.

The recording and transcript do not disappear when the call ends. They are saved, usually in the cloud, where they can be searched, shared, and exported later. Where they are saved, and who can reach them, depends on which tool you use.

Question 3: Does the tool use our meetings to train its AI?

This is where tools differ the most, and it's worth checking before you choose one. Microsoft states that Copilot in Teams does not use your prompts, responses, or meeting content to train its AI models, and that the data stays inside your organisation's Microsoft 365 environment. Microsoft's privacy documentation says this directly, and notes the content is processed within the Microsoft 365 service boundary rather than on the public version of the AI.

Third-party note-takers vary widely. Some store your recordings on their own servers and, depending on the terms you accept, may use that data to improve their models. Others say they do not train on customer data at all. The only way to know is to read the specific tool's privacy terms, because two tools that look almost identical can treat your data very differently.

Question 5: How do we roll these tools out safely?

You don't have to ban these tools to use them responsibly. Businesses in this position typically:

• Pick an approved tool and say so, asking staff not to connect others to company meetings, keeping recordings in one place you control.
• Turn off auto-join, so the tool joins only when someone chooses to record, rather than automatically for every meeting on a calendar.
• Announce recording and get consent as standard practice at the start of a call, skipping the recording when someone objects.
• Prefer tools that keep data in your own environment and do not train on your data, over ones that hold everything on their own servers.
• Control who gets the summary, checking the default sharing setting so transcripts are not emailed to everyone, including people who missed the meeting.
• Keep bots out of sensitive meetings such as legal, HR, financial, and confidential client conversations, unless there is a clear reason and everyone agrees.

If you use Microsoft 365, an administrator can control whether Copilot and transcription are allowed in Teams meetings, giving you one place to set the rule rather than relying on each person to get it right.

Three questions worth sending your IT provider

Each of these corresponds to a decision that shouldn't be left to individual staff to work out on their own.

• Which AI note-taker are we standardising on, and can auto-join be switched off across the business?
• Does our chosen tool train on our meeting data, and where exactly are recordings stored?
• Can we restrict recording bots from legal, HR, and confidential client meetings at an administrator level?