3rd Party Note Taking Zoom Bot Policy

[austinlparker]

We've recently seen an uptick in concerns from maintainers and contributors about third party AI assistants joining Zoom meetings. In short, there are a few concerns --

• These bots are, quite frankly, rude and overeager. If there was a guarantee that the operator of a bot was in a meeting with the bot, and could control the bot, we wouldn't have a huge problem. However, these bots will often aggressively join meetings that are on an operator's calendar even if the operator has not joined, and can not easily be removed from a call by a maintainer.
• The bots don't necessarily easily comport with various global privacy statutes. Maintainers and contributors that are EU-based, for example, have stronger rights under GDPR than others. It is often unclear to these individuals how to have their data removed from these tools. It is also unclear to these contributors how their data is managed by these third parties.
• In the event that a bot is behaving badly (eg, a user asks for the bot to be removed but the owner isn't around), it's painful for maintainers to actually kick the bot because they have to switch users.

Given these concerns, the GC would like to invite community feedback on AI transcription bots and their presence in OpenTelemetry Zoom meetings. Concomitantly, we will be working to create automation to aid maintainers in managing Zoom calls in order to remove disruptive/unwanted bots.

[trask]

I did this from Zoom Account 3, will be interested to know if it shows back up in that Zoom Account again

[trask]

This didn't work. It showed up again in the same meeting this week 😞

[svrnm]

Personally, I think we should just ban the usage of those bots in our meetings. I know that some people rely on them these days already, but our meetings are recorded, so people can either rewatch the recording, or ask an AI to watch the recording for them and give them a summary, or whatever, but doing your private recording is just rude and a waste of resources.

If identifiable, can we send an email/message to the company affiliated with the bots and tell them to stop this please, especially if the owner of the bot is not joining the meeting?

[trask]

This didn't work. It showed up again in the same meeting this week 😞

apparently I didn't "verify" my report (Zoom sent a link to my email), will see if verifying the report improves anything...

[rogercoll]

Another Assistant AI bot joined during the K8s Semantic Convention SIG (30/04/2025), we just moved to a new Zoom call and shared the link in the corresponding Slack channel (#otel-k8s-semconv-sig)

[mx-psi]

Another Assistant AI bot joined during the K8s Semantic Convention SIG (30/04/2025), we just moved to a new Zoom call and shared the link in the corresponding Slack channel (#otel-k8s-semconv-sig)

@rogercoll Was this the same bot as before? If not, can you share the full name of the bot?

[rogercoll]

Another Assistant AI bot joined during the K8s Semantic Convention SIG (30/04/2025), we just moved to a new Zoom call and shared the link in the corresponding Slack channel (#otel-k8s-semconv-sig)

@rogercoll Was this the same bot as before? If not, can you share the full name of the bot?

Not sure if it was the same bot, at least it had a different participant name 😄 (looks like the same source)

Participant name: Akanksha's Notetaker (otter.ai)

[austinlparker]

Do these bots join from their domain (eg, otter.ai)?

[svrnm]

Otter AI seems to be the vendor of these bots so maybe we send a complaint to them?

[trask]

I kicked and reported Otter AI from Zoom Account 3 on Monday. Not sure if/when these take effect.

In case folks don't know, here are the steps to kick them out:

All meetings are created by Zoom with randomized passcodes, which are embedded into the shared calendar links. All members of [email protected] have access to this document listing the host keys for our meetings and explaining how to deal with inappropriate behavior in Zoom.

If you are a maintainer and not already a member of [email protected], just request to join it and then slack me to approve it.

[trask]

Response from Zoom:

Thank you for your patience and understanding while we conducted a thorough investigation into the concerns outlined in your recent report. We fully acknowledge the impact these issues may have had and sincerely appreciate the opportunity to address them.

Following a thorough review, the reported participant is an Otter.ai note taking bot that has either been enabled by the admin on your account, or is being utilized by one of the participants within your meeting. We have determined our Acceptable Use Guidelines were not violated, as this is a known Zoom Marketplace Application.

Steps to take on Zoom to assist with blocking Otter.ai from joining your meetings:

Enable Waiting Room to prevent Otter.ai from entering the meeting room automatically. This setting prompts the host when participants are in the Waiting Room and the host determines who to allow into the meeting.
Disable Otter.ai by signing in as an admin at marketplace.zoom.us then click Manage on the upper right corner. Then select Admin App Management > Apps on Account, all 3rd party apps installed by users on the account via Zoom Marketplace will be listed. Click Otter.ai then click Manage App. From here you should be able to disable the app so internal users will not be able to use it on Zoom. You can also remove the app from this page. (External participants will still be able to utilize Otter.ai underscoring the importance of enabling Waiting Room).
In the future, if you wish to set permissions on 3rd party Marketplace apps, Click Permissions on the left panel.
Please note, if Otter.ai is already removed from the Zoom Marketplace of the user, this does not mean Otter.ai will stop joining the user's meetings automatically. If the user has enabled “Auto-join all meetings” and/or synced their calendar with Otter.ai, then Otter.ai will continue to join automatically until settings are changed on the Otter.ai management page of the user.

Here is a helpful article from Otter.ai to help change the settings mentioned above:
https://help.otter.ai/hc/en-us/articles/12906714508823-Stop-OtterPilot-from-automatically-joining-your-meetings

Once again, thanks for reaching out and we hope this information is helpful.

Best Regards,
Zoom Trust and Safety

[svrnm]

Response from Zoom:

Was this response written by AI? It sounds like that 😆

External participants will still be able to utilize Otter.ai underscoring the importance of enabling Waiting Room

I think this is the issue we run into that "public meetings" are not really a common thing in the zoom universe