How do I stop AI notetakers from joining my meetings?
Turn off automatic admission so every guest waits in the lobby, admit participants yourself, and ask your Workspace or IT admin to restrict which third-party apps can connect to your meeting and calendar. If a bot is already in the call, name it out loud and ask its inviter to remove it — every legitimate notetaker appears in the participant list.
The controls that actually work
Host-side: require admission for external guests and never enable auto-admit for a meeting with sensitive content. Organisation-side: an administrator can restrict third-party app access to Meet and Calendar, which stops OAuth-connected notetakers from being invited by employees at all. Meeting-side: a stated rule beats a technical control for internal culture — most uninvited bots arrive because somebody on the call invited theirs without thinking.
How to tell if a bot is recording
Reputable notetakers join as a visible named participant, usually with the vendor or owner in the name, and platforms increasingly badge automated joiners in the admission flow. If you see a participant who never speaks, never appears on camera and has a product-shaped name, that is a notetaker. Ask who invited it and what happens to the recording afterwards — the second question is the one that matters and the one people rarely ask.
The better question: where would the recording live?
Most “no notetakers” policies are really data-custody policies wearing a costume. If a bot is recording a client conversation to a vendor cloud in another jurisdiction, that is a genuine problem. If it is recording to your own server, under your retention policy, invited by the meeting owner, the risk profile is closer to somebody taking notes. Donna exists for organisations that want the record without the third-party copy — which is why she is deliberately visible in every room she enters.
Related questions
Can I block all bots but keep my own notetaker?
Effectively yes: keep external admission manual and admit only the notetaker your team runs. If your admin restricts third-party apps, a self-hosted bot is not an OAuth app in your tenant at all — it is a guest your host admits.
Is it rude to remove someone else’s notetaker?
It is normal. Removing a bot removes a recording, not a person. Say it plainly — “we are not recording this one” — and the room will thank you more often than not.
Do notetakers record even when their user leaves?
Many do — the bot is an independent participant, so it stays until the meeting ends or someone removes it. Donna leaves on her own when the humans are gone: she watches the roster (other vendors’ notetakers do not count as humans) and has a silence backstop as a second signal.
Put Donna in your next meeting
Access is open — sign in with your Google account and she’s in your dashboard in minutes. Rolling out to a whole team, or want a hand with the server setup? We’re glad to help.