How to Effectively Manage AI Meeting Assistants (aka: bots) in Your Zoom Sessions

Background

We are being made aware of AI Meeting Assistants such as Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai transcribing and summarizing the contents of Zoom meetings. While in most cases AI Meeting Assistants are utilized for the legitimate purpose of summarizing a meeting’s contents and supporting accessibility, the transcribed contents may be used without permission to summarize or record meeting content on behalf of a user.

When AI meeting assistants present themselves in Zoom meetings, it has the potential to capture and share:

Meeting information that was not intended to be shared.
Personally identifiable information (PII) of hosts and attendees.

Guidance for Zoom meetings which include an AI Meeting Assistant

1) Upon entering a Zoom meeting, ask if the meeting is being recorded or if live transcription is enabled.

Ask the host if the meeting is being recorded or transcribed. If so, you can request that the meeting not be recorded or leave the meeting entirely.

Under the Massachusetts Two Party Consent Law it is a crime to secretly record a conversation, whether the conversation is in-person or taking place by telephone or another medium such as Zoom.

Under some instances the activity of AI bots could violate FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act)

2) Set your Zoom meeting to require authentication.

Requiring authentication will ensure that participants attending the meeting are Harvard affiliated users.

Instructions on how to set your Zoom meeting to require authentication.

3) Use the Zoom Waiting Room feature.

The Waiting Room gives the host an opportunity to disallow an AI bot from entering your meeting.

Instructions to enable the waiting room.
Instructions on how to use the waiting room to admit guests. 
What does the AI Meeting Assistant (aka bot) look like in the Waiting Room?
The AI Meeting Assistant would enter the meeting as a participant.
The host or co-host has a Waiting Room set up and would screen and admit each participant.
The AI Meeting Assistant would display as “Matt’s Otter.ai Bot” or “Matt’s Firefly.ai Bot” in the waiting room.
The host can boot the AI Meeting Assistant out and not admit them to the meeting thus preventing unauthorized meeting transcriptions.