Zoom AI Companion: What It Does and How to Turn It Off

What Zoom AI Companion Does

Zoom AI Companion turns meeting speech into text that Zoom’s AI features can use. The current interface labels them Zoom AI, following the retirement of the AI Companion name.

For client calls, the features do different jobs:

• Meeting summary produces a recap and next steps from the discussion. Optional settings add in-meeting chat messages or text extracted from shared screens.
• Meeting questions answers prompts about the discussion captured while the feature is active. A participant can ask what they missed, subject to the host’s access settings.
• Smart recording adds chapters, a summary and next steps to a cloud recording. It uses the recording and speech-to-text data.

Zoom’s data-use explanation identifies the inputs for each feature. A meeting summary can use speech-to-text data without you making a cloud video recording. An absent recording file therefore doesn’t establish that the conversation went unprocessed.

For example, a client might discuss an income change before you share their payslip. The spoken detail can enter the summary. With screen-content processing enabled, readable payslip information can also become an input.

Meeting Summaries and Note Taking

The host’s sharing settings decide who automatically receives a meeting summary. Account owners can also access summaries, and recipients can save or forward copies.

Under Automatically share summary with, the administrator can choose Only meeting host or allow wider distribution. The widest option is All meeting invitees including those outside of our organization. A host-only choice prevents automatic sharing for newly created meetings going forward.

Review existing meetings separately.

Zoom’s summary settings also include Restrict users from sharing summaries and Send an email notification when sharing with participants. The latter can send a sign-in link instead of placing the summary text in the email.

Find the Summary Already Created

Open your Zoom account’s Summaries area. My Summaries contains summaries you own, while Shared with me contains those others shared with you. Summaries can also appear in Zoom Hub and a meeting’s dedicated chat when that chat is enabled.

An email-only account setting changes those access options.

Use the summary management controls to inspect sharing and remove an unwanted summary. Deleting the Zoom item cannot recall a copy someone already saved or forwarded.

Treat the Transcript Separately

A summary and a retained transcript are separate records. Zoom’s privacy whitepaper explains how administrators can disable and lock Meeting transcript to avoid retaining a persistent transcript for summary generation. Temporary inputs are discarded after successful generation, or after unsuccessful retry attempts end.

A cloud recording can retain its own transcript independently. Review that setting alongside the summary controls. Set a retention period for the summary itself using Auto-delete meeting summaries if your brokerage keeps the feature enabled.

Before keeping an AI-generated file note, check it against what the client actually said. Correct a mistaken income figure or an omitted condition before the summary influences the loan file.

Does Zoom Train on Your Calls?

No. Zoom’s privacy whitepaper says it does not use communications-like customer content “to train Zoom’s or its third-party artificial intelligence models”. That commitment covers meeting audio and video, as well as shared content.

Generating an answer still requires processing the content. Under Zoom’s federated approach, relevant meeting text can go to a third-party model provider. Zoom says those providers operate under zero-retention policies with limited trust and safety exceptions.

Processing location depends on the account’s hosting region and deployment settings. The model deployment documentation describes Zoom-hosted options and regional arrangements. Being an Australian broker doesn’t, by itself, establish that your account’s processing stays in Australia.

The training promise also leaves sharing decisions with you. A summary emailed to external invitees has reached those recipients even when the underlying content is excluded from model training.

Turn Off Zoom AI Companion

An account administrator can prevent future use across the brokerage. A meeting host can stop use in the current call. Your personal settings control meetings you host, subject to administrator locks.

Disable It Across the Account

You need account-owner or administrator privileges to change account settings.

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal and open your profile menu.
2. Select Admin Center, then Settings and Zoom AI.
3. If available, turn off Allow Zoom AI on this account. Confirm Disable and save.
4. Where you manage features individually, turn off Meeting summary with AI and lock the setting.
5. Disable the meeting-question control too. Zoom’s documentation also calls it Allow users to ask AI Companion questions during meetings. Lock it to prevent users re-enabling it.
6. Review Smart recording and Meeting transcript separately so your chosen policy covers recorded and retained meeting content.

The universal account toggle is available only to eligible accounts. If it is absent, use the individual controls. Zoom documents the meeting-question setting and locks separately.

After saving, reopen the settings and confirm the selected features remain disabled. Run an internal meeting without client information and check that the host cannot restart locked features.

Change Your Personal Defaults

In the web portal, open Settings, then Zoom AI. Disable Meeting summary with AI and the meeting-question setting. A greyed-out control means an account or group administrator must change it.

If you want manual summaries, leave the feature available and clear Auto-start when meeting starts instead. That stops automatic starting but leaves the host able to start it deliberately.

Stop It During One Meeting

As the host in the Zoom desktop app:

1. Hover over the Zoom AI icon at the top right of the meeting window.
2. Click Stop Zoom AI to stop the active AI features. Clearing Meeting summary alone stops only that feature.
3. Review the confirmation. Select Delete meeting assets if you intend to delete the associated summary and transcript, then confirm Stop.
4. Confirm the AI controls show the features have stopped before resuming the private discussion.

Earlier app versions put these controls in the bottom toolbar. A participant can ask the host to stop AI use.

Stopping it can still leave a summary of the earlier discussion unless you delete the meeting assets. Participants’ already-completed My Notes transcripts are an exception to that deletion.

Remove Other Note Takers From Zoom

Turning off Zoom AI Companion does not remove Read AI or another company’s meeting bot. A third-party note taker has its own participant entry and settings.

To remove Read AI as the Zoom host:

1. Open Participants.
2. Open the three-dot menu beside the Read note taker.
3. Select Remove and confirm Remove.

Read’s removal instructions also give every participant chat commands. Type Read stop to make Read leave and create a report of what it already captured. Type Opt out to make it leave and delete the recorded data without creating a report.

For future calls, the person who connected Read can open their Read Calendar and turn off Add Read? for the meeting. Do this at least 15 minutes before the start so the change can sync. Ask anyone bringing another note taker to disable its automatic joining too.

Before discussing the client’s finances, check both the Zoom AI status and the participant list. Confirm the unwanted bot has left, then continue the call.