AI Exposure · Meeting notetaker
What Microsoft Teams actually does with your data
The meeting recorder your charity already owns. Everything it captures becomes a file in OneDrive and SharePoint, where the rest of the AI can reach it.
- Trains on your data
- Microsoft says no
- Processed
- Your Microsoft tenancy
- Can you turn it off
- Yes, with policies
- Verified
- 3 July 2026, against Microsoft's published documents
What AI is in it?
- Recording and transcription. Captures audio, video and screen sharing, with an automatic transcript alongside. The recording lands in the organiser's OneDrive or SharePoint like any other file.
- Intelligent recap and Copilot in meetings. Paid add ons that summarise the meeting and pull out action points, using the transcript as their source.
- Automatic recording of big events. Town halls and webinars are recorded automatically by default. The organiser has to switch it off, not on.
Does your data train AI models?
Microsoft says no.
Teams meeting content sits under the same Microsoft 365 commitments that cover Copilot: prompts, responses and your organisation's data are not used to train the underlying AI models.
The questions worth your time here are about what the recording becomes once the meeting ends.
Where is your data processed?
Your Microsoft tenancy.
Recordings and transcripts are stored in your own OneDrive and SharePoint, under the permissions and geography of your existing Microsoft 365 tenancy.
Three quiet defaults are worth knowing: everyone invited to the meeting can view the recording, Microsoft 365 Search indexes it, and Copilot can reach whatever the signed in person can.
A recorded meeting is not a memory, it is a document.
What changes between free and paid?
Recording comes as standard.
Recording and transcription are part of ordinary Microsoft 365 plans, so this notetaker is already in the building.
The AI recap features cost extra, but the raw material, recordings and transcripts of your meetings, accumulates either way, one click at a time.
Can your organisation turn it off?
Yes, with policies.
Administrators control who can record through meeting policies, per person or per group.
There is also a policy that requires every participant to explicitly agree before recording and transcription start, which is exactly the consent mechanism a charity wants, and it is not on by default. Someone has to ask for it.
What does this mean for the people you support?
A supervision or safeguarding call recorded "for the minutes" becomes a permanent, searchable document that everyone invited can open, and that the suite's AI can summarise. The people being discussed never agreed to that document existing.
The recording question and the AI question are the same question, and consent is the answer to both.
What to check this week
- Ask for explicit consent to be switched on. Your Microsoft admin can set the policy that makes Teams ask every participant to agree before recording or transcription starts. It exists, it is off by default, and it is one setting.
- Scope who can record. Meeting policies decide which staff can record at all. Limit it to the roles that genuinely need it rather than leaving the global default on for everyone.
- Set the meeting rule, and remember the automatic ones. Name the meetings where recording and AI recap never happen: safeguarding, casework, supervision, HR. And remember town halls and webinars record themselves unless the organiser switches it off.
Sources
Everything above is my plain English reading of what Microsoft publishes. The originals:
- Microsoft: Manage Teams recording policies for meetings and events reviewed 3 July 2026
- Microsoft: Data, privacy, and security for Microsoft 365 Copilot reviewed 3 July 2026
Vendors change these documents quietly and often. If you spot something out of date, email me and I'll re-verify the entry.
Who invited it to the meeting?
The settings above are worth an afternoon. But the real exposure with a notetaker is not a switch. It is which meetings it sits in, because meetings are where the things too sensitive to write down get said out loud.
And several answers above split on whose account it joins from. Anyone in a meeting can bring a notetaker, including guests from outside your organisation, on free personal plans nobody at your end can see.
So this is a rule to agree, not a box to untick: which meetings can be recorded, who has to say yes first, and whose account the recording lives in.
My free Charity AI Policy Generator writes that rule with you in a few minutes. And finding out what has already been sitting in on your meetings is what a discovery is for.
See your whole toolkit at once
This page covers one tool. The AI Exposure Report Generator covers your toolkit: tick the tools your charity uses and get one report showing what the AI inside each of them does with your data, as a Word document you can table at your next meeting. Free, and nothing you tick leaves your browser.
The Report Generator, start to finish: tick your tools, read your exposure, download the report.
Read the other tools
The same questions, answered for every tool in the directory.
Your office suite
Microsoft 365 Copilot
The AI inside Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams. It can reach whatever the signed in person can reach.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Google Workspace with Gemini
Gemini inside Gmail, Docs, Drive and Meet. Google says your content is not used to train models outside your domain. What it can reach is the longer answer.
Verified 3 July 2026 →AI chatbots
ChatGPT
The one your staff are probably already using. What happens to what they type depends entirely on whose account it is.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Google Gemini
Google's chatbot, one tap away on Android phones, in Chrome and in search. On a personal account, the training switch is on until someone finds it.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Claude
Anthropic's chatbot. The same personal versus organisational story as the others, with the training question put to you as a setting.
Verified 2 July 2026 →Meeting notetakers
Otter.ai
The notetaker that joins your meetings, and can invite itself to the next one. What it hears may help train its AI.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Microsoft Teams
The meeting recorder your charity already owns. Everything it captures becomes a file in OneDrive and SharePoint, where the rest of the AI can reach it.
You are here
Zoom AI Companion
The AI inside the video calls much of the sector runs on. Zoom's no training promise is unusually specific, and there is a reason it is worded that way.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Fathom
The free notetaker that arrives one personal install at a time. The recordings live in the US, and the training answer has two halves.
Verified 3 July 2026 →Charity CRMs
Beacon
A UK charity CRM with AI on every plan since 2024. Beacon publishes where your data sits and how to switch the AI off, which leaves one question to ask them directly.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Donorfy
A UK charity CRM where the AI mostly arrives through the side door: optional integrations. What you connect decides where your supporter data goes.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
CiviCRM
The open source CRM ships no AI of its own. What that is worth to you depends on which CiviCRM you are running: one your organisation hosts, or a hosted product somebody sells you. Everything below splits along that line.
Verified 20 July 2026 →
Salesforce
In much of the sector through ten free licences. The AI paperwork is detailed and mostly reassuring, with one default that runs the other way.
Verified 3 July 2026 →Accounts
Xero
Your accounts package now has an assistant called JAX. Xero says your data is not used to train its AI, and names the AI companies your questions travel to.
Verified 20 July 2026 →
QuickBooks
Intuit's accounts package now has an assistant throughout. Its privacy statement says your information is used to train its AI models, and it says so in as many words.
Verified 3 July 2026 →Marketing and design
Mailchimp
Your supporter mailing list lives here, and Mailchimp belongs to Intuit now, which means the same small print as QuickBooks covers it.
Verified 3 July 2026 →
Canva
The design tool half the sector lives in, free through Canva for Nonprofits. Whether your uploads help train AI depends on whose account they sit in.
Verified 3 July 2026 →