AI Exposure · Meeting notetaker
What Otter.ai actually does with your data
The notetaker that joins your meetings, and can invite itself to the next one. What it hears may help train its AI.
- Trains on your data
- Otter's policy says yes
- Processed
- The US
- Can you turn it off
- Depends whose account
- Verified
- 2 July 2026, against Otter.ai's published documents
What AI is in it?
- Meeting transcription and summaries. Joins video calls, records, transcribes, and emails a summary to attendees afterwards.
- Automatic joining. Once connected to someone's calendar, Otter can join their meetings by default, including meetings the other attendees did not know would be recorded. This is how a notetaker ends up in a safeguarding discussion.
Does your data train AI models?
Otter's policy says yes.
Otter's privacy policy says it improves its services by "training our proprietary AI technology on de-identified audio recordings and on transcriptions (which may contain Personal Information)". The parenthesis is Otter's wording, not mine.
Worth reading twice, because de-identified describes the audio, and the transcription is admitted to contain personal information. In a meeting where the conversation is about a named person, what was said about them is the content, not the label on the file.
I have not found an opt out for this training in the policy. The version I checked is dated 16 June 2026.
Where is your data processed?
The US.
Otter is a US service, and its privacy policy names Amazon Web Services in the United States as where the data lives.
A recording of your team meeting, and everyone in it, goes there.
What changes between free and paid?
Admin controls cost extra.
Free and Pro accounts are personal accounts with personal settings. The Business tier adds workspace admin controls.
In practice most Otter in most organisations arrived with one enthusiastic member of staff on a free account, which means the settings are theirs, not yours.
Can your organisation turn it off?
Depends whose account.
If it is a personal account, the member of staff controls everything, including whether Otter joins meetings automatically.
Your organisation's real control is a clear rule about when notetakers are allowed in meetings at all, plus the consent of the people being recorded.
What does this mean for the people you support?
A notetaker that joins from someone's calendar records the people in the room as well as the person who invited it. In casework, supervision or safeguarding, that means a recording of a conversation about somebody who is not in the meeting and cannot object to it.
Recording needs consent, and an AI attendee needs it as much as a camera would.
What to check this week
- Decide where notetakers are banned. Name the meeting types where no AI notetaker is ever welcome: safeguarding, casework, supervision, HR. Put it in your AI policy.
- Kill automatic joining. Anyone using Otter for work should turn off calendar auto join, so the notetaker attends by decision rather than by default.
- Say it out loud at the start. Where a notetaker is allowed, the host says so at the start of the meeting and anyone can object. A one line script does it.
Sources
Everything above is my plain English reading of what Otter.ai publishes. The originals:
- Otter.ai: Privacy policy (effective 16 June 2026) reviewed 2 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.
You are here
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.
Verified 3 July 2026 →
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 →